


Smoke Without Fire

by by_nina



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Disaster, Drama, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Ishval Civil War, Pre-Canon, Thriller, Tragedy, Trauma, Violent Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25767787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/by_nina/pseuds/by_nina
Summary: The year is 1905. Roy Mustang has graduated from the Amestris State Military Academy, and all he has left to do before becoming a State Alchemist is to master flame alchemy. This dream comes to a halt with the sudden and mysterious death of his mentor Berthold Hawkeye in an apparent flame alchemy accident—and with him, the knowledge Roy has long sought.Roy knows he must keep his eyes ahead, but there are things to uncover beneath the ashes, and he cannot look away. How did Berthold Hawkeye truly die? What does Berthold’s death have to do with the disappearance of his research? And where is Riza Hawkeye? Personal hopes hinge on the answers, but Roy cannot know how far beyond him the truth truly goes.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Comments: 38
Kudos: 24
Collections: FMA Big Bang 2020, Genuary 2021





	1. Smoke Without Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming to read Smoke Without Fire! I hope you like what has been a labor of love for more than two years before it finally saw the light. It was a very different story when it started, and I'm excited to share it with you all now.
> 
> This is a collab with thepancakepenguin for the FMA Big Bang 2020.

Berthold Hawkeye is dead.

It isn’t the sort of news that Roy Mustang hoped to hear upon his return to this small town for the first time in three years. The shock cuts through the dull cold of a midwinter morning in the new year, through his long black coat, even through the new, deep blue military uniform concealed beneath it. He buries the new information away at the back of his mind, as if by asking to hear it again the truth will be different.

He does want to properly ask, but instead he says:

“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken.”

The old carriage driver who delivered him the news shakes his head slowly, sadly. Roy is no stranger to him, having been his passenger between the town and the Hawkeye house many times when he was Berthold’s student. The old man will not lie.

“‘’Fraid not. Been a month since anyone’s seen any sign of life in that old house. You won’t find a soul there.”

This should have been all that Roy needed to hear to be convinced. Cameron is a small town in the East Area, where landed families have lived for generations and everyone knows everyone else, even those who live in the outskirts, like the Hawkeyes. If they’re certain about the fate of one man who hadn’t left his house in years, then they must have not missed anything or anyone, living or dead. But the casual declaration of Berthold’s death—the vague four-word dismissal of someone Roy knew to be highly intelligent, harsh in his honesty, and as of three years ago very much alive—defies the objective truth that it speaks of.

He doesn’t press further and insists to be taken to the house. The carriage driver’s face is a picture of grim pity, with a knowing look that invites Roy to ask any question he might still have before he regrets anything. But Roy doesn’t take the invitation. His mouth turns dry and runs out of words, and it stays that way throughout their long, uncomfortably quiet trip. He no longer wants to hear anything else on the matter. He might not be able to accept it until he has seen it for himself.

Even after three years at the Amestris State Military Academy, Roy retains a perfect memory of the Hawkeye house’s exterior, from the shadow it casts forward at sunrise, to the paint and wooden trim worn away by time long before he first came here, to the firmness of the stone-paved path that he takes up to the front door. If he were to observe only these features, Roy would still be able to convince himself that he is imagining the eeriness that hangs above the house. No doubt that the house would be visibly stripped bare, its windows and front door boarded up if Berthold truly has died.

And then it hits him. The first harrowing sign that something terrible has happened.

It’s the _smell_ of the house, how it seems to have lingered in the past month, greeting only the most insistent of visitors who approach the front door. Smoke, wood, paper—it’s faint, but its effect sweeps over Roy as he crosses the threshold, potent enough to sting his eyes a little. Something has burned here—much of it. Dread fills Roy’s chest as he realizes which room in the house could produce such a smell upon burning. He breaks into a run through the ground floor and up the stairs, never mind the telling silence or the dust that seems to color every forgotten surface gray. The signs of lifelessness are not enough to prepare him for what lies beyond the closed, unassuming door of Berthold’s study.

Roy doubles over coughing, suddenly overwhelmed as the room releases a concentration of the fumes he caught upon entry—and worse, traces of something that he is unable to describe but instinctively recognizes right away.

There isn’t much of it anymore, but it’s unmistakable: the sharp, filling, sickening stench of a body burnt to death.

And far too quickly, it turns into something more. It’s the sweat that seeps out of his palms and the back of his neck, the goosebumps that crawl all over his body, the tingling at the back of his throat that threatens to spill out as sick at his feet.

Trembling, Roy staggers back and finds that his knees have gone weak. He slams his hand back against the wall and instinctively finds the light switch by the door as he tries to hold onto something, anything. Somehow, the smell isn’t the worst of what he has come to find.

The once-polished floorboards are dulled by a dark stain of dried blood indistinguishable from scorched wood. In the middle is a dark mound that could only be what is left of his old master, a crushed and splintered mosaic of black, white, gray, and brown. What he supposes must have been ribs, arms, and legs have collapsed into a pile of snapped, disjointed bones; the only clue as to the orientation of the body is the unmistakable remaining half of a skull, with its cracked teeth and a hollow eye socket. Oddly shaped, cracked patches of skin appear here and there, and all over, the mound seems to ripple with the presence of small flies and beetles crawling in and out.

Indeed, who else can it be but Berthold? There is no one else who could have been in the study, much less died there. Besides Berthold himself, only Roy has ever had access to the room, during his alchemy lessons as a teenager—never even Berthold’s young daughter.

Miss Hawkeye. Riza... how old is she again? She couldn’t be any older than fifteen or sixteen. In Roy’s memory, she was always shy and quiet, but easy to talk to once approached. Never drew attention to herself, always kept to some sort of routine so well that no one could ever tell what she was thinking or how she was feeling. The thought of someone like her around something so gruesome and violent makes his stomach turn.

Out in the hallway, several shaky steps out the door of the study, Roy swallows back his nausea. It takes him a moment or two to clear his head, and once he can breathe again, he knows where she would be if she were still at the house. He cautiously approaches a door at the end of the hallway; if his memory serves him right, then he’ll find her room behind it.

“Miss Hawkeye?”

He knows in his heart that he will be met only with silence, that by now she would have come to him and told him everything he needed to know if she were anywhere in the house, but calling for her—for anyone, _anything_ that could help him make sense of what he’s just seen—feels like much-needed release.

“Riza?”

Roy runs the last couple of steps to her room, then freezes as soon as he grabs the doorknob. Real, gut-wrenching fear fills him for the first time since he arrived at the house, haunting him from the horrific scene he has just left in Berthold’s study. A voice at the back of his head screams some fate worse than, say, witnessing her father’s death. No, no. Perhaps she was in town when it happened. Perhaps she was home, but managed to escape from whatever killed her father. But where is she _now?_

He finally opens the door and steps inside.

* * *

The old carriage driver is still out by the roadside by the time Roy has finally composed himself somewhat and emerged from the house an hour later. He feels embarrassed, recognizing the favor that the old man has done him by keeping him company, but at the same time relieved that there is someone who could possibly answer some of his more burning questions right away. He approaches the old man, who looks up with a jump and appears slightly disoriented, as though he has just woken up from a nap.

“Sorry you had to see what you did,” says the carriage driver, yawning. “Never saw it myself, but I did hear talk. Poor fella. And that young lady…”

Roy is still breathing heavily. “What exactly happened?”

“The folks about these parts say it was an accident. You know old Hawkeye, with his flame alchemy and all.” The carriage driver seems to hesitate for a moment, then he sighs. “I doubt it was that, really. Old Hawkeye’s always been some strange fella. I’m thinking it mighta been his own hand that done it, you know?”

“You’re not saying…?”

The carriage driver draws a line across his own neck with one thumb, making a crackling sound with his mouth as he does so. “Just like that. You never really know how them alchemists’ minds work. ‘Fact, I never understood you. Always seemed like a promising young fella, and you’ve gone and joined the military, eh?”

Roy nods slowly. The carriage driver continues, “That’s good, making something out of yourself. Reckon you would’ve done better with a different teacher, though, don’t you think? Someone a bit more… all right upstairs. You a State Alchemist now, then?”

The silence that follows is short but uncomfortable.

“No. No, I’m not.” Roy looks back up at the old house. “I never completed my training with Master Hawkeye.”

There is a painful lump that settles in his throat, maybe out of fear.

“His daughter, Riza. Where is she?”

Roy almost wishes he hadn’t asked. The carriage driver purses his lips, clicks his tongue, and sighs. He averts his eyes from Roy’s. “Ah, the young Miss Riza. ’Fraid nobody knows. No one’s even seen her since before we learned about her old man, see? The state her room was in when the folks hereabouts found it… they think whatever killed old Hawkeye’s done her in too.”

“But there’s no sign that anyone else in the house had… you know.”

“Who knows? Haven’t looked into these happenings myself. But everyone here knows the pretty young lady, don’t they? Noticed she didn’t call for no one after old Hawkeye died. Only thing I see coulda’ happened, hate to say it. A real shame.”

Stubbornness bristles within Roy as the carriage driver looks into the distance, as if now searching for answers himself. Roy knows he cannot blame him for drawing this conclusion so quickly. The Hawkeyes were never particularly close with their neighbors, certainly not enough for anyone to at least clear out Berthold’s bones from the scene of the crime. Roy wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that he knew the family better than anyone else in the town. There are questions, he’s certain, that only he is asking.

“Where to next, then?” asks the carriage driver. “‘Fraid I don’t have all day, ‘specially since no one really comes this far out.”

Roy shakes his head. “You go on ahead, mister. There are a few more things I want to see here. Thanks for your help.”

The carriage driver looks at him incredulously, but thankfully doesn’t prod. He simply shrugs and helps Roy unload the single heavy piece of luggage that the latter had come off the train with. He then raises his hand in a gesture that is somewhere between a wave and a salute, then trots off in the direction he and Roy had come from. Roy watches the carriage driver disappear beyond the bend, and when his surroundings are quiet and deserted once more, he returns inside the house.

He braces himself with a deep breath before returning to the study, and the smell is no less repulsive than when he first walked in. This time, Roy is able to take in the sight of the room better, avoiding the burnt, rotting distraction in the middle of it all. Gone is the handsomeness of the hardwood shelves that line the walls, the warm familiarity of the yellowing, leather-bound academic titles in every corner and every surface. Some have suffered more ruin than others; close to Berthold’s corpse is an unrecognizable black and gray mass, with only curls and splinters to serve as clues that it was once wood and paper. Roy nudges the edge of the mass with his boot, and some loose ash comes disturbed, swirling an inch off the ground.

 _Physics,_ Roy notes, still knowing by heart how Berthold’s books had been sorted in this room, and he sighs in lament for the material lost. He recognizes _Practical Applications of Thermodynamics_ , an old favorite that he had often snuck to his room at night, now reduced to a small piece of deep blue leather with familiar bronze lettering.

The damage stretches out to all directions in different degrees. In the corner by the door, few of the titles in Berthold’s philosophy collection were affected, their edges and bindings only singed but the rest of them otherwise salvageable. The other direction is marked off by a shelf that somehow survived a lick of flame down its blackened side; everything past it seems to be untouched. Finally, a large portion of the wall is a deep, dull black which fades upward into brown, then into the cracked and curled up edges of white paint gone yellow.

Across the room, the damage is minimal. The tops of two shelves have been blackened to coal, and on the books themselves, there seems to be no immediately visible damage. Roy marvels at the thought of a fire that had burned hot enough to reduce a man to ash and bones, but which had also left much of a room filled with wood and old, brittle books intact. This is how Roy knows right away that Berthold did not die by suicide or in an accident. Something that people do not seem to understand about alchemy is that it isn’t magic but science; consciously and deliberately controlled, with very little left to chance. Given the state of his corpse, Berthold would not have survived long enough to contain the spread of the fire. He wouldn’t even have been able to think through the agony of burning, or the lack of breathable air.

Berthold Hawkeye was killed.

Of this, Roy is almost certain. Berthold’s proficiency with a delicate yet powerful craft such as flame alchemy is enough reason—indeed, the _only_ one—that a recluse like him would have attracted the wrath or greed of an enemy. But with roughly a third of the books Berthold owned now lost to the same fire that killed him, Roy runs into a dead end. How is he supposed to prove that Berthold’s flame alchemy research had been kept there, and how can he know whether or not it has been destroyed as well?

Roy walks around the room slowly, carefully going over title after familiar title that he spent the better part of three teenage years with. Yes, this is a start: most of these books had been written by someone else with some other expertise. Borrowed from a library, traded with other scholars, or shipped in from other countries, and never in Berthold’s handwriting. Roy has read most of them, even helped catalogue them shortly before he left to join the military.

 _Would he have encoded his notes on a typewriter, or had someone else do it for him?_ No, Roy quickly answers himself. His master was not fond of newer forms of technology, and he cannot imagine Berthold having something like flame alchemy transcribed by someone else just like that. Even Roy never saw a shadow of Berthold’s flame alchemy research notes. At the very least, considering this gives him another lead; he will have to go through Berthold’s personal notebooks, which he knows are kept in the master bedroom, always close by Berthold’s side.

He finally allows himself to consider Riza again. Roy recalls her room, and how at first glance, it seemed normal, but slowly revealed details that begged more questions than they answered. In the middle of the room, her bed was neatly made; next to it, her wardrobe was left with its doors ajar. A few pieces of clothing had been scattered on the floor before the wardrobe, and those remaining inside lay disturbed. Her dresser was a more concerning mess, with some of the bottles on it knocked over, contents spilled and somewhat dried on the surface. And in the corner, a full-length mirror lay on its side, shattered from what Roy guessed was the impact of falling over.

There is small comfort in the thought that, whatever happened to Riza, it could not have been anywhere near what her father had suffered. She would have been left there to rot if she had also been killed. If anything, the state her room was left in is enough proof that she left the house alive. Whether she managed to get away or was abducted remains unclear.

The dresser, the mirror—these might be signs of a struggle, or of a terrified young girl crashing through her room to get away from her father’s murderer. Her wardrobe, on the other hand, speaks more deliberately of a hurried escape, though not necessarily a spontaneous one. In Roy’s mind, her departure unfolds in a thousand different directions:

At what point did she manage to run?

Did she meet Berthold’s murderer right away, or did they give chase?

If she was caught, where did they take her?

Back in the present, Roy leans against the lone desk in the study in hopes of calming the flurry of his thoughts. Every possible scenario is followed by a sinister, pessimistic ending that he quickly buries away… but why? Why reject the worst in favor of a less certain gamble?

His eyes find Berthold’s remains once again, and the sight of it offers him no clarity. And yet the somber finality of his master’s fate, in contrast with the unanswered question of Riza’s own and the whereabouts of Berthold’s research, sparks something in him. A sudden but resolute flicker in his chest. It is the first hopeful thing Roy has felt since arriving at the house, and he takes it in carefully, but eagerly.

There is little more that Roy can do for Berthold than find out who had killed him. But as Berthold had left behind the only family he had left and a wealth of knowledge meant for only the most judicious hands, their safety is Roy’s responsibility now. _It‘s what Master Hawkeye would have wanted_. For his sake, Roy chooses to believe that the road ahead, illuminated by that flicker in his chest, will take him to where he needs to be.

To Riza Hawkeye, and to flame alchemy.


	2. The General

Once again, at eighteen hundred hours, Roy is the last to leave the East City Public Library.

His current routine began soon after his visit to the Hawkeye house not two weeks ago. He had briefly considered staying there, as it cost nothing to take up his old room again, the town was already familiar, and he might have had time to investigate Berthold’s death more by talking to the townsfolk. But the sight and stench in Berthold’s study proved to be unbearable, even after he tried to clean it with alchemy.

At the very least, Roy managed to bury what was left of Berthold in the grounds, preserving it so an autopsy can be performed under a formal investigation. Berthold’s remains were placed in a simple coffin transmuted from a dead tree; a marker was similarly made from a few stones scattered around. Roy couldn’t make flowers bloom for laying on the grave, but defrosting the soil so it could be dug was easy.

There was no one else around to mourn the old master.

Retreating to the city became his only option upon realizing that the locals truly knew nothing of Berthold’s death except that he had been burned beyond recognition, and that all capacity to conduct an investigation lay with Eastern Command. It turned out to be a good decision. Roy stays at a comfortable hostel near the downtown area, where he has a private room for only 1,500 cens a night, and from where the library is a mere five-minute walk.

In the city, he has everything he needs; the journals retrieved from Berthold’s bedroom, all the reference materials that could possibly be helpful in deciphering them for pointers on advanced alchemy, and a quiet place far from any deathly distractions to do all the work.

His days begin just before sunrise in the hostel’s small dining room. He arrives first just as the hostel staff begins to serve their free breakfast buffet, including unlimited coffee and fresh fruits delivered from the countryside. In the corner of the dining room is a small table that he gets to have for himself as he pores over one of Berthold’s journals, writing in the margins when he finds something he could look up in the library for the day.

Roy has become a favorite among the library staff thanks to his daily visits. Always the first to come in when the library opens, always courteous as he makes his way to a table in the back of the natural sciences section. By the fourth visit, he realizes that they’ve taken note of his favorite table and have made a habit of preparing it just for him; the chair is set at the angle he finds most comfortable, the blinds of the adjacent window tilted to let just enough sunlight in while keeping the heat out. And day after day, once Roy has settled in with a ruled notebook, one or two of Berthold’s journals, and his reading pile for the day, he hardly leaves his spot.

Today is the second time that the library’s shy, brown-haired intern has had to peer around the nearest shelf to call Roy’s attention at the end of the day.

“Excuse me? Mister?”

He looks up from his book, his index finger pressed firmly to the spot he last read. The intern continues, “We’re closing for the day. Would you like some help returning those books?”

“Oh, yes please. Thank you.”

The intern begins collecting the books scattered all over his table, sorting them so deftly into neat stacks that he is unable to keep up as he tries to help. He doesn’t realize that she has stopped, observing him, until she speaks again.

“You must be training to become a State Alchemist, huh?”

The corner of his lips lifts into a curious expression. “How can you tell?”

“Well, on your previous visits, you’ve been taking books from the same few shelves in natural sciences—that makes it easy enough to guess. You can’t be learning alchemy for the first time, because these books are mostly on specialized topics, and a beginner alchemist wouldn’t have the capacity to go through so many books at once. ” The intern pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and offers him a kind expression. “I would have guessed you were already one, since you carry yourself like a soldier. But you wouldn’t be here if you were; you’d be at the National Central Library.”

Roy hesitates before he breaks into a smile. “You’re very perceptive. Are you studying alchemy yourself?”

“Oh, alchemy isn’t for me. The research appears to be very interesting, of course, but there’s too much to be done. I wouldn’t be able to do anything else but read!” Sheepishly, the intern adds, “But I do know which books alchemists like to read and borrow. It’s all material you would have read by now.”

“I suppose.” An idea comes to Roy. “Unless… you wouldn’t happen to have anything by Berthold Hawkeye in the stacks, would you?”

“The stacks? Let’s see… I have spent a lot of time in the stacks since I started my internship, but I don’t recall seeing anything by a Berthold Hawkeye. Is he an alchemist?”

He sighs and smiles sadly. “He was.”

They are interrupted by the loud scraping of chairs as they are tucked into their respective tables. The intern hastily continues gathering Roy’s books. “Well, thank you for always accommodating me here,” says Roy. “It seems it’ll take a while for me to complete my research.”

“You’re welcome!” beams the intern. “I hope you pass your certification. If there’s anything you need, you can always ask me.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

It is the loveliest night that Roy has seen in a while. He steps out of the library and into a pleasantly cool breeze; looking up, he finds a starry sky with sparse clouds. The streets glisten with a light, powdery coating of snow that reflects the warm glow of the street lamps. The city has never been more welcoming of his evening walks before returning to the hostel.

On nights like this, it’s easy to forget the circumstances that brought him to East City, and even easier to momentarily dismiss the civil war that has been raging in one southeast region of Amestris for nearly four years, in the annexed territory of Ishval. There was no trace of it back in Cameron and there is none in East City now, where the people all greet one another on the sidewalk like old friends, where families laugh and stroll hand in hand, where young lovers appear lost in their own little corners of town. But it was this very war that urged Roy to enter the military, and it’s what has brought him here in pursuit of advanced alchemical knowledge.

Indirectly, it’s also the reason for the impatience and disappointment that pulses through his gut as he walks by the Eastern Command Headquarters. He had reported Berthold’s death to the heads of the Intelligence and Civilian Safety Divisions on his third day in the city; they had promised to promptly investigate the matter and that they would be in touch with him for his assistance; he has spent the past week with books and handwritten journals and nights made sleepless by the horror he has been trying hard to forget, and still he hasn’t heard from them. Would they have acted more urgently if he had told them he intended to learn the old master’s expertise so he could apply for State Alchemist certification and devote his efforts to the war?

He doesn’t think so, but he cannot lie to himself: he feels as if he has been left in a dead end. No answers to Berthold’s death. No lead on flame alchemy.

Roy wishes he’d been entirely confident when he discussed his intent with the intern, but each day without word from Eastern Command dims his hopes. He sees them as his only chance now, as he begrudgingly comes to accept that none of the concepts he has studied thus far could lead him to flame alchemy—the knowledge in Berthold’s journals is indeed advanced, but disappointingly generic. And with a month lost between Berthold’s death and Roy’s discovery of it, any further amount of time that passes becomes increasingly critical. There’s the matter of the State Alchemist certification exam to worry about, then the war where he could be helping, and the dangerous prospect of what flame alchemy might be used for if the murderer had in fact run away with its secrets.

If all else fails, Roy still has the fundamentals of Berthold’s research, and he could perhaps work from there. He has already become desperate enough to learn from it to consult even philosophy books, after all. The loss of his original goal is a lamentable prospect, but what choice does he have?

With any luck, he might be able to optimize his alchemy for preserving corpses. Or removing offensive smells.

Roy returns to the hostel thirty minutes later than usual. Although he _is_ hungry, he considers skipping dinner and turning in early for the night, but he has barely entered the lobby when he is called from the front desk.

“Mister Mustang?”

“Yes?”

The receptionist emerges from the desk, as if propelled by the urgency of the message. “You have a visitor waiting for you in one of our private lounges. A gentleman from the military. He says it’s urgent.”

Quite stupidly, Roy blurts out, “I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He recovers with, “How long has he been waiting?”

“Ah, at least an hour. This way, please.”

A hundred questions enter Roy’s mind all at once, all lost in the cacophony of his mind’s voice echoing a hundred times over. He follows the receptionist nonetheless, past the quaint dining room, turning left into a short hallway where there are three ostensibly small rooms that Roy has neither visited nor seen before. The receptionist opens the door at the end of the hallway and gestures for Roy to enter.

The lounge is small and far less cozy than the main dining room, with only one table for two and a cast iron heater in lieu of a proper fireplace. Roy sees his visitor right away. Even seated, head down as he reads the evening paper, he appears intimidatingly tall, with a build that would put many younger, more athletic men to shame. The insignia on his chest and the stars on his epaulet reveal him as a brigadier general, but even these do not fully state his importance, as Roy quickly realizes when the general looks up, smiles, and rises from the table.

“Good evening, Lieutenant Mustang.” His voice is quiet, but full and firm. “I am Brigadier General Dieter de Havilland. State Alchemist, from Central Command.”

_Central?_

Roy stands at attention. “Sir.”

The general nods curtly, then turns to the receptionist. “Thank you for leading Lieutenant Mustang to me. May we have our dinner served here?”

“Of course.”

The receptionist leaves, but Roy remains where he is. He stares unblinkingly at de Havilland until the latter smiles; beneath his powdery brown beard, the gesture seems to soften his features and bring out a twinkle in his eyes. “You seem so surprised, Lieutenant. Won’t you join me?”

He pulls out the chair opposite him, and Roy quietly takes the invitation. de Havilland continues, “It came to my attention that you conferred with our men at Eastern Command with an urgent concern the week prior. Were you not anticipating further action?”

“It’s not the matter at all, Sir,” Roy finally says. He pauses; when he speaks again, he does so in a more measured manner. “I didn’t expect my report to be taken up at Central Command. You see, Berthold Hawkeye was—”

“Not a State Alchemist, yes. Then it may also come as a surprise to you that I am the director of the—ah, how nice.”

de Havilland is interrupted as a server enters the lounge with a cart bearing a silver tureen, an elegantly carved pitcher, and two sets of dinnerware—tall goblets with frosted etchings, white ceramic bowls with gilded edges, and dainty, polished silverware. As the server arranges the items before then, de Havilland says, “Young man, would you be so kind as to bring us the rest of our meal all at once? My companion and I would like to carry out our conversation uninterrupted.”

The server nods. “Certainly."

Thick, steaming mushroom soup is ladled into their bowls, and the server promptly leaves with the cart. de Havilland begins with his soup, speaking again only once the server’s footsteps have faded away. “As I was saying, I am the director of the State Alchemist program. You may be wondering what has brought me into the investigation of a man who was not a part of that program.”

“It _is_ a surprise, General, yes,” Roy utters slowly. “But I did hope Master Hawkeye would join the State Alchemist program before I found out he had died. I plan to take the State Alchemist certification exam myself.”

“Yes. I’ve surmised that this Berthold Hawkeye’s alchemy has had much to do with your intentions. Flame alchemy, is it not?”

“It is.”

“And you believe that he was killed for his research on flame alchemy?”

“Yes.” In his mind, Roy has returned to Berthold’s study, the old master’s rotting remains back on the floor from the grave. His hands begin to tremble and sweat. “As you might know, General, there’s very little information on flame alchemy in published books and journals. Much of it is anecdotal, even theoretical. But Master Hawkeye devoted his life to refining flame alchemy. It was intricate and precise. I’ve only seen him perform it once myself.”

It was at the height of summer, shortly after he had first moved in with the Hawkeyes. He was barely fourteen years old. A tree had fallen in the grounds behind the Hawkeye house, its roots weakened by the heat. Young and persistent, Roy had convinced Berthold to demonstrate flame alchemy to him, and the scene that followed was one that he would never forget.

Roy had stood behind Berthold as the latter wordlessly knelt some distance away from the fallen tree, fluidly traced an array in the earth, and set his hands on it, fingers pointed in the direction of the tree. The fire began with small flames at the tips of the tree’s branches and roots, before erupting in a blaze that consumed it entirely. As the tree disintegrated, the fire spread and engulfed the other trees in the vicinity, some living, some dead—it was as if the world had turned into fire itself.

The inferno never spread towards the house; there seemed to be an invisible border keeping it at bay. Before Roy could properly marvel at this feat, Berthold had extinguished the fire almost as quickly as he had conjured it, leaving not even a single glowing ember. Several trees had died, but many were spared beyond the reach of the flames.

“The practice of alchemy is more than mere science or skill,” Berthold had said. “It is communion with forces that have allowed us to use their power. And this communion cannot happen without due reverence for all the things around you.”

Roy remembers how a young, meek Riza had watched them from the doorway.

In the present, Roy draws a deep breath and continues. “I never had the chance to learn flame alchemy myself. I left for the military just as soon as I completed the fundamental lessons. And I fear that flame alchemy may have fallen into the hands of someone less than trustworthy.”

Before he can respond, de Havilland’s face becomes a picture of delight as the door swings open again. Roy is taken aback by the amount of food on the cart this time, never having seen this much of it all at once throughout his stay in the hostel. It is also a great deal richer than his past meals here have been. Served before them are lamb chops with herbed rice and two kinds of brightly colored purée, a side of fragrant roasted vegetables, and a platter of fruit cut into glistening slices.

“My, my,” says de Havilland as the server rearranges their table to make room for the new dishes. “You have truly outdone yourselves, thank you very much. This service is impeccable.”

The server bows and makes his exit, leaving Roy and de Havilland alone again. de Havilland’s eyes crinkle with a smile, and he clears his throat after a moment. “Forgive me, I seem to have been distracted… What leads you to believe that Berthold Hawkeye’s research may have been compromised? Were you not the custodian of his research materials?”

“No, sir, I was not. I don’t know what his research looked like. In fact, I’ve spent the last week here in East City trying to decipher the journals I retrieved from his home in Cameron. I was hoping one of them would contain the code to his research.”

“And have your findings served this purpose?”

Roy’s ears ring with the clattering and squeaking of de Havilland’s utensils, agitating him further. “His flame alchemy research isn’t in those journals. I’ve approached them from every possible scientific field, every possible perspective, and I’m convinced that he hasn’t written it in code. The information in his journals is direct and plain, and it all discusses advanced concepts in alchemy. But not flame alchemy itself.”

de Havilland blinks at Roy incredulously while somehow still maintaining much of his composure. “Not encoded at all? How unusual. Do you believe his flame alchemy research may have also been written as plainly as you say these journals were?”

“It’s possible, sir. In any case, I believe that Master Hawkeye’s murderer may have information on his flame alchemy research. Solving the murder may be the key to finding it.”

In the silence that follows, de Havilland eats slowly, as if to give himself time to consider the matter. Roy begins eating as well, quiet with anticipation. At last, the general puts down his utensils and dabs at his mouth with his table napkin.

“Well, first I must thank you for bringing this murder to our attention, Lieutenant,” says de Havilland. “I’m sure you understand that we face uncertain times, with a war being fought in Ishval as we speak. And while the violence on the battlefield is the most urgent of our priorities at present, we have not forgotten the well-being of our people throughout the rest of the country. Especially not when they are threatened by hateful, dark intent.”

Roy puts down his utensils as well, listening intently. de Havilland continues, “The grim reality is that many lives have now tragically been lost, and as always we hope to turn to our fine alchemists, so they may continue serving our great country during this war. But we cannot rest easy if they too are unsafe, whether they are civilians or employed by the state. And this case—this callous murder of an innocent alchemist—it cannot be ignored.” He pauses for a moment. “Lieutenant Mustang, I would like to give you an important assignment.”

“Sir?”

“I will be speaking to Internal Affairs, of course, but consider yourself on assignment in my division from now on, beginning here in the East Area, where conflict is highest. By yourself, you have instigated an investigation into the murder of a civilian alchemist. Under my direct supervision, I would like you to secure all known alchemists in Amestris—meet them, profile them, ensure that they are well, that their research is accounted for. There is no other time that our alchemists have been a more precious resource to our country.”

de Havilland resumes eating, although Roy knows that the general is observing him as he thinks.

“And the murder? Won’t I be involved in the investigation as well?”

“A crime scene can be investigated by the average officer, Lieutenant. But only an alchemist can know other alchemists well; that is where you come in. If one reclusive alchemist had been the target of such a heinous crime, it would be wise to assume that other alchemists could be as well. And, see, if someone has indeed murdered Berthold Hawkeye for his flame alchemy research, what might they have made of their prize? Must we protect them as well, or must we protect others from them?”

Roy nods slowly. “Do you believe it’s possible, General de Havilland?” he asks, following a short silence. “To solve Master Hawkeye’s murder... through the work of other alchemists?”

“Oh, I do. But the true question is, don’t you?”

It’s curious, the way it feels as though a new fire has been ignited within Roy. He had hoped to find a clearer path towards the truth about Berthold Hawkeye; he never imagined the more personal part of his journey to be so closely intertwined with a greater purpose. He couldn’t possibly turn away from the call now that opportunity has knocked on his door, and there is more to push him forward than just a dead man’s notes. The director of the State Alchemist program as his direct superior, a network of alchemists all across the country, all the resources he could need to finish what the master had started.

Suddenly his doubts over the past week disappear, and for the first time in a long time, he feels as though he is exactly where he should be.

“I accept the assignment.”

de Havilland taps his knuckles on the table, knife still in hand. “Splendid. I look forward to working with you, Lieutenant Mustang. I do believe this assignment will yield what you seek just as much as it will serve our wishes for this country. We begin tomorrow.”


	3. Fears on Their Wings

_I’m alive._

Frightened, orphaned, far from home, but alive.

It is the first and last thing that Riza has told herself each day for the past four months. She tells herself this again as she lies awake, back flat against a lumpy mattress, hand outstretched to catch the sunlight coming through the window. Nothing. Her sensations have been dulled by her lingering shock, leaving nothing but her palpitations for her to feel.

She has forgotten much of that night. It comes back to her in fragments of pitch black and flames that emerge out of nothing as though they are trying to take her. A voice sometimes calls out, strangled and terrified, and she wonders if it is her father’s or her own. Whenever she tries to reach out, she emerges from the mass of nothingness only to find that the inferno has filled the room, consumed her father, razed her back in circles and then—

And then the trembling begins, and it’s what finally convinces Riza that she is here, that she _is_ alive, despite every aching pulse throughout her body screaming that she shouldn’t be. It’s agonizing to even turn to her side and curl up in fetal position.

Riza can no longer remember how it felt to have an uncomplicated relationship with her father. Even when her mother was alive, he had been distant at best, and perhaps Riza knew in her heart that it would never get better after her mother’s death. In spite of it all, she had hoped to bridge the gap between herself and Berthold, had spent the better part of her teenage years finding something that could still hold them together.

She never dreamed that this _something_ would be her memory of how he died.

It takes every ounce of energy she can still scrounge up to force herself out of bed, into the routine she has been using to keep herself grounded when her guilt and self-hatred are at their worst. Riza trudges unsteadily into the small bathroom, grabbing at the sink to pull herself upright. She forces herself to look at the mirror—and what a sight she is, as though she’d aged twenty years since leaving home—and recite:

_My name is Riza Hawkeye._

_I am sixteen years old._

_I am an only child. My mother died when I was ten._

_My father and I lived together in Cameron._

_My father is dead._

And then Riza cannot bring herself to continue. Her knees give way, and she collapses onto the cold tiled floor, pressing her face into the side of the sink as her head throbs. She cannot seem to cry, and yet she shudders and heaves as she struggles to properly breathe. The heaving eventually subsides into hiccups and pangs of pain down her back, and then it’s over.

Exhausted and lightheaded as she is, this is when she is finally fully awake. Riza pushes down whatever is left of the negative emotions she woke up with, and in her head, she goes over her tasks for the day:

It is Friday morning, and the marketplace will be at its busiest due to this week’s shipment of clothes, books, and handcrafted furnishings. If she leaves soon, she will have more time to browse through the special goods after getting their regular food supplies. The madame will want something new to read, perhaps something lighter than the scholarly materials in her collection. In the late afternoon, she will be transcribing the last fifty pages of the madame’s old teaching notes; if she finishes quickly, she will have time to assist the madame in accommodating their latest guests from out of town. And by night, she will have to sort and transcribe the profiles of the madame’s old students again, a task she began when she first came to live with the madame and which never seems to end.

* * *

The man seated across Roy in East City’s oldest café is the opposite of Berthold in nearly every way. Emmett von Braun from Meox introduced himself as a father of three, lovingly married for twenty-five years to his childhood sweetheart, Clara. He has traveled to many countries with his family, learning not only about different cultures, but about different scientific fields outside of alchemy. Above all, he encourages his children’s interest in alchemy, allowing them to learn by watching him as he works at home.

The only thing he had in common with Berthold was that they had spent some years studying alchemy together as young adults, after which they parted ways and have not been in contact since. This gave Roy hope at the beginning of their meeting—perhaps this time they would finally find a lead worth pursuing—but it’s becoming disappointingly clear that Emmett von Braun is another dead end, just as all their other prospects have been.

“... I’m so sorry, where was I?”

Seated at Roy’s left, de Havilland turns to him, prompting him to continue the discussion. Roy quickly glances at his notes. “You said you recently began research into a new branch of science because your daughter showed some interest in it. Could you tell us more about this?”

von Braun’s eyes light up at the mention of his daughter. “Yes, yes, my darling Lorraine. As the eldest, she’s always been the most eager with her alchemy pursuits. Sometimes I believe she will soon overtake me as _the_ alchemist of the family! But of course, right now she is limited to what she can practice at home. So, lately, she has been experimenting with cooking using alchemy. Can you believe it?” He chuckles heartily as he drinks his coffee. “A simple house chore!”

Roy taps his pen against his notebook. “And how exactly has she been using her alchemy for cooking?”

“Oh, it’s a simple, brilliant thing!” von Braun leans forward, hands animated, and de Havilland and Roy follow suit, as if he were about to share some crucial secret. “She places her hands around the pot like this, see, just before it becomes too hot—and she controls the chemical reaction as the food cooks, so each ingredient releases just the right amount of flavor and complements all the other ingredients! Isn’t it amazing?”

He straightens up and clasps his hands together giddily, looking from de Havilland to Roy and back—Roy manages to recover quickly from his stunned silence. “And—and how have you been helping her with this type of alchemy?

“Well, of course, food alchemy deals with much more than just flavor, you know? You want to think of acidity, toxicity, spoilage, medicinal benefits, and then of course there’s the matter of how heat affects all these chemical reactions—Lorraine now has me studying thermodynamics on top of everything else!”

von Braun laughs again, as if being goaded into pursuing a new branch of physics were nothing more than the everyday whim of a teenage girl. It takes Roy all his willpower not to sigh in exasperation, even as he tries to remain optimistic about the value of the hour and a half that they’ve spent with von Braun.

Thankfully, de Havilland takes up the next question. “How has your research into thermodynamics fared so far? Perhaps you have pursued, ah, specific applications for it?”

“Other than heating a pot of stew? I was hoping I’d make enough progress to figure out how to keep the house warm during the winter—oh, but where have the months gone? I might not be of use to my family for some time!”

Roy takes the opportunity to ask, “Surely if your research into thermodynamics could help you produce a flame, it would be worth your while?”

von Braun’s look turns thoughtful. “I don’t think that has crossed my mind, Lieutenant. You see, my research has always been driven by that which is needed by those who pursue it. This is why I’ve been fascinated by the different ways alchemy is used all over the world, and why my current research complements my daughter’s interests. That being said, I don’t see the need to pursue flame alchemy. I’ve always considered myself a scholar of alchemy, even when I was learning it. I do wonder, of course, why Berthold had been so enamored by flame alchemy—but his reasons were his, and I can only hope he considered his pursuits complete before he passed on.”

He leans back and drinks the remainder of his coffee. de Havilland nods sagely, and Roy closes his notebook. Roy is glad that de Havilland had given him the liberty to end an interview as he pleases, as he would have scrambled to think of anything else he wanted to ask von Braun. Roy rises with the most gracious smile he can manage and offers von Braun his hand. “Thank you very much for making the time to see us here in East City.”

“It was my pleasure,” says von Braun, and Roy believes that he means it. “What better way is there to spend time with fellow alchemists than discussing our work?”

“And we look forward to doing it again,” says de Havilland. “Perhaps you will consider our earlier offer of joining the State Alchemist program? Of course, it is in the interest of further developments in alchemy research for the country, especially during these trying times. I’m sure you will find many like-minded fellows among our ranks.”

von Braun clasps de Havilland’s hand in both of his. “I would be honored. You have my home address and telephone number. I hope to be in your company again soon.”

“Indeed, Mister von Braun.” de Havilland pulls out his pocket watch, the same intricate silver one endowed to all State Alchemists. “You will have to excuse us, as Lieutenant Mustang and I have a train to catch.”

* * *

Roy watches from the Amestris Premium Rail as the skyline of East City retreats into the horizon. Its gray slate roofs and faded brick walls give way to the vibrant colors of spring along a meadow, just as the sun reaches its highest point. What a waste for the view to be so fleeting, he thinks. It is a welcome break from his notes—hastily scribbled life stories of all the alchemists he has met since beginning his assignment with de Havilland three months earlier. He closes his notebook and slides it to the other end of the table.

“You seem deep in thought, Lieutenant.”

de Havilland sits across Roy in the lavish booth, setting a silver tray of tea and assorted pastries between them. The sight of food leaves Roy weary now, having had much of it in far too many meetings that were ultimately worth nothing to his purpose.

“If I may say so, General, I feel that the assignment hasn’t quite served its purpose.”

“Oh?” de Havilland pauses from adding sugar cubes into his tea. “How exactly has it fallen short?”

Roy takes the notebook and flips through its pages slowly. “In three months, we’ve met with over fifty alchemists living in the East Area. They come from different backgrounds; some have been practicing alchemy longer than others; many never considered becoming State Alchemists until we extended the invitation.” He pauses every few pages to point out profiles which match the descriptions. “We’ve met a few who are pursuing a specialized type of alchemy. Two knew Berthold Hawkeye at one point in their lives.” He pauses. “And yet none seem to be a viable suspect in his murder.”

de Havilland folds his arms and hums thoughtfully. “That is quite an observation. What makes you think so?”

“You said it yourself, General. ‘Only an alchemist can know other alchemists well.’” Roy exhales. “I’ve been taking note of their speech patterns in our interviews, to determine if they view the practice of alchemy a certain way, what biases they might reveal. Or how a specific type of alchemy ties in with their beliefs. I don’t believe we’ve met anyone with any remarkable view of flame alchemy.”

After a moment, Roy is met with a laugh.

“How astute! In the four years I have headed the program, I have not worked with anyone who perceived things as deeply or as well as you do. What a pleasure it is to work with you, Lieutenant Mustang.” de Havilland takes a sip of tea. “So, you are not convinced that those who knew Berthold might know anything of interest? Emmett von Braun, and—what was that lovely lady’s name?”

“Martha Lund.” She was a neighbor of the Hawkeyes’ when Berthold was newly married, who had tried to befriend the family through her interest in alchemy and the shared experience of having a new child. She had moved out of Cameron before Riza was even old enough to attend school. “Neither of them had much to say about flame alchemy, no matter how I steered our conversations in that direction.” He recalls his memory of Berthold and the dead tree again. “Practicing alchemy comes with reverence for it. They showed none for flame alchemy.”

de Havilland nods. “And, if I may ask, how much do you revere flame alchemy, Lieutenant?”

An impetuous flicker passes over Roy’s face, and he notices the general watching him closely. His many thoughts on flame alchemy from the past several years begin coalescing into something else. Is it… pride? Protectiveness? Allegiance?

He finds himself sneering.

“I’ve been on this path for a very long time,” he begins. “I sought out Master Hawkeye because I heard he was brilliant. Unmatched. People said he was mad, but what they called madness was devotion to his practice of alchemy. He went further than most alchemists do, and I knew even then that that was the kind of alchemist I ought to be, if I am to use alchemy to follow this path.”

“And what might this path lead to?” says de Havilland quietly.

“To serving my country.”

Roy looks out the window, his face impassive once again. They have completely disappeared into the rural parts outside East City. Down in the valley by which the train is now passing, a quaint little village blooms into view, with its dirt roads and old cottages made of stone and wood scattered across a lush green field. He can imagine the life they lead there—the children running barefoot to clear rivers where they can fish and bathe, their backyards with heirloom crops, the freshly baked bread coming out of their ovens.

He thinks of the war.

How fragile this life is.

“I wanted to devote myself to protecting this country before I wanted to become an alchemist,” Roy continues. “When I became Master Hawkeye’s student, I knew I couldn’t separate one from the other. But what good would I be to my country if I can’t fulfill a need that hasn’t been met?”

The train is plunged into darkness as it enters a tunnel carved into a rocky slope. From the sparse light thrown onto them by the lanterns hanging along the sides, Roy sees his faint reflection in the window of the train. He has never looked more tired and indifferent.

The full brunt of his frustration over the past three months is just dawning on him now. For all the unworkable information they’ve gathered since then, they might as well have not met any alchemists at all.

They emerge from the tunnel, and de Havilland finally speaks again. “I must say, I am glad to hear your thoughts, Lieutenant. All things considered, I couldn’t ask for a better subordinate. Head and heart both in the right place. And I have seen how hard you have worked along that path you speak of, both concerning this assignment and otherwise. I’m sure you have improved your alchemy somewhat as you continued your education throughout these months with what was available to you.”

de Havilland pulls out an envelope from the pocket of his coat, previously opened, and begins to unfold it. “That being said, I cannot promise you that we will quickly find an answer to Berthold Hawkeye’s death. This morning, I received a new report on the investigation at the Hawkeye house in Cameron. I’m sure you already know the nature of their findings based on their preliminary report...”

Roy does not wait for de Havilland to read the document. “No evidence of forced entry, no fingerprints, no weapons, and no foul play,” he says dryly. “No conclusive findings in the autopsy, due to the state of the remains. And no traces of transmutation.”

“Indeed,” de Havilland concurs. “But the intelligence department hasn’t ruled out homicide, given the peculiar nature of the burning. It seems they aren’t entirely lacking in imagination after all.” He puts the envelope away and leans forward, elbows on the table. “The circumstances around this investigation are less than ideal. But know that I am in full support of it, and of your ambition to become a State Alchemist. If you find even the faintest hope in the way of flame alchemy, we have the resources to invest in your development. Indeed, we may as well consider you an honorary State Alchemist now, for the hard work you have done for the program.”

Roy meets de Havilland’s eyes, and they exchange a nod despite the inefficiency of flattery to allay his renewed doubts.

“Thank you, General.”

de Havilland begins to clear his place at the table. “I will be getting some rest for the remainder of our trip. You should try to do so as well, Lieutenant. We will not be arriving in Mebdo for at least another two hours.”

The general rises from his seat, walks past Roy, and soon disappears into the adjacent sleeper car of the train.

Roy hadn’t noticed that the blue sky they left in East City has turned overcast. A drizzle begins, obscuring the views beyond the window, and Roy is left with nothing for company but a notebook he wishes he could burn. He flips through its pages in idle resignation. He could recite many common details about the alchemists they had met and the towns each of them comes from, but not any of their names. None had been truly remarkable. None of them matter.

He stops at Martha Lund’s page, where a significant detail catches his eye amid all the scribbles. An agricultural alchemist, her knowledge offered little in the way of flame alchemy, but Martha Lund knew the Hawkeyes more than a decade ago. Her closeness to the family, if brief, gave him hope when she first mentioned it, and so he earnestly wrote it down at the top of the page. Traced twice over and underlined in red. _Riza_.

“Why, of course, Berthold and Edith’s lovely young daughter!” Lund had said over tea in her house in Resembool. “How is dear Riza? She should be completing her secondary education by now, am I right?”

It was the first and so far only time Roy had had to deliver news about Riza to anyone. “I regret to say no one knows where she’s been, Mrs. Lund. She seemed to have disappeared the night Master Hawkeye died. We’ve been looking for her for the past few months.”

Lund had appeared genuinely crestfallen at the news. “Oh my, that poor dear. She was always such a sweet friend to my daughter.”

“Is there any chance you’re still in contact with anyone who might know her whereabouts?”

“I’m afraid not. It’s been far too long since we lived in Cameron. Most of our family friends and colleagues are from here in Resembool.”

Riza was not mentioned again for the rest of their visit.

Roy flips further to the end of the notebook. Between the pages, he finds the photograph which he retrieved from the Hawkeyes’ living room on his last visit and has been using to ask other alchemists about Riza. Here, she wears her hair a little longer, and on her face is the most genuine smile he has ever seen from her. She appears no older than nine or ten and is sitting next to her mother, Edith Hawkeye, whom he never met.

He doesn’t know how much she may have changed since the portrait was taken, but it has hardly mattered. No one they have met has ever recognized the photograph or its young subject. No one knows if they are staring back into the eyes of a dead girl.

On most days, Roy has thought of Riza less than anything else, but the hope of finding the master’s daughter has so far largely depended on the discovery of his murderer. Guilt bleeds into the indifference Roy feels towards the assignment. He tries hard not to assume the worst, because accepting it even as a possibility would mean that he has failed his old master. It would mean that he has failed _her_ —so young, so innocent, so unfortunate to have had the world crumble around her in the way it did.

Roy wonders if she will soon join her father in his nightmares.

He cannot look at her face or her name any longer. He closes the notebook as the drizzle turns into rain, and the world outside turns to gray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by "Litost", by X Ambassadors. No relation to this chapter, really. I just like the song very much (it's one of my favorite Royai songs).
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has commented so far, and to anyone who has taken time to be here in the first place! I see you and I appreciate all of you.


	4. Flightless Bird

Mebdo sits at the heart of a mountain bordering the East and the North. It is an hour’s drive away from the nearest train station and accessible only by car through narrow roads that wind sharply through lush, wild greenery. Past the forested, rocky terrain that leads to it, the town welcomes visitors with its century-old houses made of hardwood and stone, backyard farms teeming with colorful vegetables, and a light, cool air unlike the humid warmth back in East City. A nondescript wooden sign at the side of the main road is all that identifies the town.

Roy and de Havilland arrive in a military car from Ohpihzeba, where they alighted the Amestris Premium Rail. The trip was spent in silence despite the rough drive, and de Havilland breaks it at last when he asks:

“Lieutenant Mustang, could you refresh my memory on the alchemist we will be meeting today?”

Roy has the document ready in his arm, a list of alchemists residing in Mebdo that the town’s local officials mailed to him two weeks earlier. He lays it in his lap and reads the first profile: “Beatrice Alcott, 53 years old. A former science teacher living in the northwest portion of Upper Mebdo. She’s traveled all over the East teaching basic alchemy to schoolchildren as young as eight years old.”

de Havilland hums in thought, then chuckles. “Children as young as eight. Imagine that. Does she have any family living with her?”

“It says here that she never married or had children of her own.”

“And she has been informed of our planned visit?”

“Yes. I took care of the arrangements.”

Deeper they go into the town, past the bustling marketplace and the stately ancestral homes of the town’s old rich, past the quaint storefronts indistinguishable from the local government offices. Faded old signposts point them higher up the mountain, where the dirt roads are unmarked and the houses are fields and groves apart from one another. They ask for directions twice before they get close to their destination.

On the third instance, they stop by an old woman walking along the side of the road, a wicker basket of vegetables in her hands. As Roy rolls down the window on his side, her eyes twinkle kindly as she greets them, “How may I help you fine men?”

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” says Roy. “We’re looking for the house of Beatrice Alcott in Upper Mebdo.”

“Why, you’re already in Upper Mebdo! Welcome to our humble village. How nice to see that dear Beatrice has new visitors!” The old woman points up at a thicket far ahead and past the end of the road. “You see those red pines? Just follow the bend all the way up, and you’ll find her house right past them.”

Roy nods at the old woman. “Thank you very much. Have a good day, ma’am.”

“And you as well, young man!”

They come to a clearing beyond the pines, finding a handsome two-story cedar structure near the edge of a small cliff. Clean and simple lines, a sturdy shape, and a less weathered finish than those of the stone houses they had passed along the way. Roy’s first impression of it is that it seems far too large for a well-traveled person living alone. Perhaps Beatrice Alcott has lived here the longest out of all the places she has been to, he thinks.

Their chauffeur remains with the car as Roy leads a cheerily humming de Havilland up the creaking steps of the house. Roy raps at the door thrice with its heavy brass knocker.

“Madame Alcott? We’re here from the Amestris Military.”

The door opens before he has even finished speaking. Beatrice Alcott is a beautiful woman, seemingly both vibrant and gracefully reserved. She seems aloof at first as well, but the wrinkles by her eyes and faint streaks of gray in her dark, waist-length hair appear to make her welcoming, almost familiar.

“I’m very glad you could make it,” says Alcott warmly. Her lips barely part even as she speaks and offers them a smile. “Lieutenant Mustang, I presume?”

Roy bows his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Madame Alcott. I’m here with Brigadier General Dieter de Havilland, director of the State Alchemist program.”

de Havilland removes his cap and holds it to his chest. “How do you do, Miss Alcott?”

“Very well, thank you.” Alcott turns back to her house, and the two men follow her inside; the rich smell of brewing coffee fills the air. “I hope you’ve had a pleasant trip. It _is_ rather inconvenient not being able to take the train here. Perhaps it’s why we get very few visitors from other places.”

de Havilland asks, his tone both carefully polite and amused, “Might that be why you have retired from teaching?”

“Yes, actually…”

The interiors have distracted Roy from their discussion. On his assignment with de Havilland, he has visited many lovely houses, some more grandiose than others, but this home appeals to him the most by far. It is every bit as inviting as it had appeared on the outside, from the wood paneled walls to the furniture swathed with woven drapery in a hundred different colors, from the delicate porcelain that adorns the cornices to the framed photographs on every surface.

At the mantelpiece, Roy finds himself staring at the bright, fresh faces of children sitting in neat rows, with Alcott standing behind them or at their side. He begins at a section where the photographs have faded, and as he goes along, they turn clearer and more brightly colored. Each one is labelled with the school where the photograph had been taken: East City Elementary School, New Optain Academy, Giribaz Preparatory School, and so on.

“... so it’s been incredibly convenient having an assistant.”

Alcott appears behind Roy and joins him in going over the photographs. “My students over the years,” she explains affectionately. “I traveled all over the East throughout my teaching career. Thirty years of it, would you believe that? Officially, I taught general science. But I’m proud to say that some of them first learned alchemy under my teaching.”

“Did they continue their alchemy education later on?” asks Roy.

“Quite a number of them did, yes. I can tell you all about them, and there are a few who live in this town. Are you also meeting other alchemists in Mebdo?”

“Yes.”

“Then it would be my pleasure to introduce you to them. Shall we get settled?”

Alcott leads Roy and de Havilland to the kitchen, where the delicious aroma of coffee becomes tinged with the homegrown herbs in storage. The table in the center has already been set for three around a freshly baked loaf of bread, a butter dish, and a small assortment of jars. The men take their places as Alcott fetches the kettle sitting on her cast iron stove and pours them each a cup of local brew.

“All right, then,” says Alcott as she sits across them. “How do we go about this?”

Roy retrieves his notebook and pen from a pocket in his coat. “As you already know, Madame Alcott, the purpose of this interview is to profile alchemists all over Amestris so we may keep ourselves up-to-date on their research interests and any progress in their work. We believe that maintaining an active network of alchemists will help us ensure everyone’s safety amid the war here in the East. That said, we’d like to start this interview by discussing your earlier background on alchemy before we talk about your work as an alchemist.”

“I see. Forgive me for asking, but was there any particular incident that led to this initiative? The war’s been going on for nearly four years.”

Roy glances sideways at de Havilland, who responds with a curt nod. “We don’t mean to alarm you, but yes,” Roy says, carefully. “We have reason to believe that alchemists who are pursuing sensitive research might be at risk. One such alchemist from Cameron was killed in his home four months ago, and we hope to prevent this from happening to anyone else.”

The warmth gradually fades from Alcott’s eyes, and her fingers flex tensely around her coffee. “Well, I see no reason to fear for my own life, Lieutenant. I’ve nothing to keep to myself after spending all these years passing down my knowledge of alchemy to my students. Helping them reach their potential, allowing each of them to deepen their relationship with what’s around us. That is my vocation as both educator and alchemist,” she emphasizes, setting her cup rather harshly down on her saucer, “and I only hope that other alchemists can say the same for themselves.”

The sound of porcelain clanging rings harshly in Roy’s ears, disorienting him nearly as much as her sudden hostility. They haven’t yet dealt with someone who seemed to take offense to their intentions, but right away he changes his approach with the shadow of an apologetic smile. “Of course, there’s no assumption that all alchemists are under the same level of threat, if at all. But the idea is to be able to work harmoniously with all alchemists in the country, beyond just ensuring their safety.”

“As true alchemists should. And you’ve been successful in meeting this objective so far?”

Roy laughs a little. “It’s been going rather well, and we’d like to continue that with you, Madame Alcott. Could you tell us about the kind of alchemy you practice?”

Alcott smiles again. “I deal with sensations in the human body. In particular, soothing physical pain. It’s been very useful in dealing with young children, of course, but I like to think of it as a way of truly becoming one with the world.”

“How so?”

“Allow me to draw from my experience coming from a family of alchemists. We’ve practiced alchemy for many generations, so naturally, I became interested in it myself. I was in secondary school when my father first taught me the fundamentals of alchemy. But he didn’t impose a particular type of alchemy on me—no one in my family did. We’re all free to learn alchemy as we deem fit for our skills, our interests. What we intend to use it for."

She exhales. “And yet, for all our mastery of alchemy, we still cannot truly say that we have mastered the world around us. Humans remain vulnerable and at the mercy of the world. And perhaps, as long as we are unable to grow past that, we will not truly gain an understanding of alchemy or ourselves. We must grow beyond ourselves and become truly equal with all things. This is why I believe that we must learn to control our vulnerabilities, including our human sensations, just as we do everything else. This is what alchemy is for.”

 _Mastering the world. Equal with all things._ Roy writes each word down with emphasis, the gears of his mind turning vigorously for the first time in a long while. He could almost hear Berthold himself saying these words, if not for the gradual change in the tone of Alcott’s voice. Strong and certain, but with an unsettling sense of pride.

“Madame Alcott, is this the same kind of alchemy that you taught your students?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I simply taught them the basics. Most couldn’t even form anything more than a shapeless lump out of mud, but it was enough to capture their interest. And as I mentioned earlier, many of my former students have gone on to become alchemists.”

“But have you ever had any kind of involvement in how they choose to pursue advanced alchemy? Things like metallurgy, or medicine…” Roy pauses for a moment. “... or flame alchemy?”

A crash—

**_“WE DO NOT SPEAK OF SUCH THINGS IN THIS HOUSE!”_ **

There are shards of porcelain on the floor, and Alcott towers over the two men, eyes flashing with fury. de Havilland remains still in his seat, his interlaced fingers suddenly rigid; Roy has shifted back as though repelled by her. Alcott’s chest rises and falls with slow, heaving breaths. Hurried footsteps come from overhead, then downstairs, closer and closer.

Roy instinctively rises from his seat and begins gathering the shards that have fallen by his side of the table. There is a moment in which his senses, still heightened from shock, fail to quickly perceive the arrival of a new figure who quickly joins him in cleaning up the mess. Roy looks up, and the figure stops— _freezes_ at the sight of him. He is staring back into alarmed brown eyes.

And then, the world seems to stop.

* * *

Riza had opened the front door for Roy Mustang when she first met him. He seemed to know how to dress and carry himself only as well as he knew alchemy, which at the age of fourteen was not at all. He was born and raised in Central, and he came into their lives before she knew how she was supposed to cope without her mother, or the kind of comfort a father could offer.

She would never know that comfort, or affection, or any kind of closure from the grief she knew she shared with Berthold. His work became his life once again, and in a way, his place in Riza’s life was filled by his new student, with whom he seemed to have more in common than his own daughter. Roy studied what her father did, but he was somewhat accessible to her. He would open the door when she came home from school; he would run errands for Berthold when she couldn’t; he would politely ask her about the town and their neighbors and how she was doing.

He was no replacement for her father, but Riza accepted what presence she could have.

Meanwhile, Berthold began to keep mostly to his room and his study. For a while, he still came down to the dining room for meals, but he would later stop joining Roy and Riza, opting to eat only in his personal spaces. She saw him less and less until the house felt emptier than it had ever been, and more so when Roy left at the age of seventeen to enter the military academy. She never knew, can never know now if Berthold’s renewed distance was due to disinterest towards anything that wasn’t alchemy, or the illness that slowly took hold of him as the years passed.

Since Berthold’s death, the flames that killed him have also continually visited Riza’s nightmares, so destructive and frightening that she is left to gather the pieces of her few real memories with Berthold each time. She hasn’t realized that she never forgot Roy Mustang until she finds him face to face with her in Madame Alcott’s kitchen, now more than a memory for the first time in three years.

In the brief second that their eyes meet, Riza is surprised that Roy’s presence hasn’t caused her as much fear as she often woke up to whenever she was reminded of Berthold. Perhaps it’s the urgency of the situation that keeps her defenses at bay, or the way Madame Alcott looks—Riza has never seen her this furious before.

Perhaps it’s her confusion over the fact that Roy Mustang is here in the first place.

The emotions reflected on his face run far deeper than her confusion. Dilated pupils, paper-white skin, the slightest catch in his breath, the trembling in his hands as he picks up the pieces of the cup. A thousand burning questions that she can hear before they are even asked.

Madame Alcott exhales as she comes down from her outburst. “Forgive me, I… I don’t know what got into me.”

Riza grabs the shards from Roy’s suspended hand and rises to her feet, quickly depositing the shards onto the table in order to place a reassuring hand on Madame Alcott’s arm. “Are you all right, madame?”

Madame Alcott grips Riza’s hand. “Yes. Yes.” Her tense shoulders come to rest. “These men are our visitors from the Amestrian Military. You recall that we were expecting them? They’re here for an interview about my work in alchemy… and, as it would seem, other matters as well.”

“How do you do?” The older of the two men rises from his seat and bows his head in Riza’s direction. His eyes are bright, a refreshing contrast from the tension in the rest of the room. “Dieter de Havilland, of the Amestrian Military. Brigadier General.” He chuckles at himself for having reduced his title to an afterthought.

Riza cannot help but smile in return. “Pleased to meet you, General de Havilland.”

She turns to Roy, and there is a short, heavy silence. Riza wonders who might speak first, or if he will be able to speak at all. She swallows back the lump in her throat.

“Mister Mustang.”

His mouth gapes slightly for a moment, as though he were searching for his voice.

“Miss Hawkeye.”

Madame Alcott blinks and looks at Riza, then at Roy, and back again. And then it goes unnoticed by their two visitors, but from the periphery of her vision, Riza watches the controlled sense of calm disappear from the madame’s eyes, catches the coldness in her tone that is so effectively masked as mild surprise.

“You knew Berthold Hawkeye,” Madame Alcott says coolly to Roy.

He nods stiffly. “I lived with the Hawkeyes for three years. To learn alchemy.”

“I see. And is this your intention after all? To talk about Berthold Hawkeye in these complicated circumstances?”

There is a quiet struggle in Roy, reflected on his face. Carefully, he says, “I understand your concern, Madame Alcott. I’m sorry we may have failed to consider how sensitive this all is. But in the interest of your safety, we will need to discuss Berthold Hawkeye’s death somehow.”

Riza feels her insides twist uncomfortably, almost as if she were waking up from a nightmare again. “What do you know about my father’s death?”

Roy takes a deep breath. “I found what was left of his body in the study. Burned to nearly nothing, and many of his books destroyed. Your home had been abandoned for a month when I came back.”

It unnerves her how clearly she imagines the scene. Roy’s words paint a picture to complement the one that lives in her head, easy to place herself into almost as if she were there herself. But it tells her nothing new. She has searched the scene for answers countless times before; each time, her mind is filled with fire, obscuring and disrupting everything she thinks she knows, and by now she has learned to fear it.

“Miss Hawkeye,” Roy continues carefully, “Do you remember anything—”

“There’s nothing to discuss, I’m afraid,” says Madame Alcott. She places a firm hand on Riza’s shoulder; only then does Riza realize how badly she is trembling. “Surely you understand that dear Riza is still in distress over her father’s tragic fate. You can’t imagine what it was like, seeing how helpless she was when she escaped that _brutal_ scene. It was only fortunate that I happened to be visiting Cameron then, or she might not have had anyone else to turn to.” The madame draws a sharp breath. “I have only one thing to say about Berthold Hawkeye. He was a brilliant alchemist, but he would have been a great man if he had been dedicated to progress for the people. Caught in his own lofty pursuits, but he never cared for his own daughter’s growth as an alchemist. His ambitions were misplaced.”

Riza winces, and Roy doesn’t miss it—he quickly glances at her, the look on his face both defensive and apologetic. He presses on, “Madame Alcott, I’m sure he had his reasons—”

“Reasons to deny his own daughter an education in alchemy? I wanted to give her what he would not! She was a lovely child when I taught at her school. Always eager to learn and very intuitive. She showed great potential to learn alchemy. Riza would’ve become accomplished in it herself if not for her father’s meddling. He forbade me from teaching her alchemy, did you know that?” The madame’s eyes are full of disdain as she looks at Roy from head to toe. “And yet he took on a student of his own, no doubt hoping to appease his ego once he had finally perfected his alchemy that no one else could wield. Tell me, Lieutenant Mustang. Did he teach you everything he knew?”

Roy slowly shakes his head after a long silence. “No.”

Madame Alcott’s voice barely comes above a whisper. “It’s true that no one could hold a candle to his dedication. Imagine how hard he worked to perfect flame alchemy until his last breath. But to what end? A sword that isn’t brought into battle may as well not have been forged at all.”

The disquiet that has been bubbling in Riza’s chest reaches its boiling point. Swaying unsteadily, she reaches for the kitchen table and supports herself on it with both hands, then sinks into a seat, staring blankly at the shards of the cup before her. Her eyes are clouded by tears, but they don’t fall.

It has been four months since she last wept in front of anyone, when she fled her home in terror and ran into Madame Alcott as the latter was preparing to leave Cameron. She cannot do so again, not even in the wake of the madame’s long-held resentment towards her father.

de Havilland gulps down the rest of his coffee and rises from his seat again. “This conversation has been disrupted long enough. Miss Alcott, please forgive us for causing you grief—and you as well, Miss Hawkeye.”

“It’s no trouble at all, General,” Riza says quickly. She isn’t sure she means it.

“I hope you are still willing to work with our cause, Miss Alcott. Questionable though some alchemists’ methods may be, this does not change our mandate to work towards the safety of all. These are precarious times, after all, and we cannot afford to dawdle.”

As de Havilland speaks, Riza hears the sound of paper being ripped, then the scribbling of a pen. She doesn’t fully realize what is happening until the shards of porcelain are gathered and taken from their spot on the table. A hastily drawn alchemical array sits on the table before her; she glimpses it just before Roy places the shards onto it, and then in a flash of light, the cup is restored to perfect form.

“Please accept my apology, Madame Alcott,” says Roy quietly. “Although I’m indebted to Master Hawkeye, I won’t let it compromise our objective. Will you still be with us?”

Behind Riza, Madame Alcott draws a deep breath. She feels the madame rub the side of her head in comfort, another hand on her shoulder; Riza remains still although she wants to pull away. “I forgive you, Lieutenant Mustang,” Madame Alcott finally says. “I realize that losing your teacher might have been difficult for you as well. You still have my cooperation, however this time I must absolutely _insist_ that Berthold Hawkeye not be mentioned in front of me or my assistant. And as her caretaker since her father’s death, I cannot allow you to compel her to speak about it. Do I make myself clear?”

Roy and de Havilland exchange looks. The general nods once.

“Understood,” says Roy.

The madame’s hands relax on Riza, and de Havilland clears his throat. “We appreciate this very much, Miss Alcott. I’m sure there is more we can discuss. Might I suggest that we take a moment to compose ourselves before we proceed?”

“Yes, I suppose we ought to,” the madame affirms.

de Havilland turns to Riza. “You are welcome to join us if you wish, Miss Hawkeye.”

Riza looks at the faces around the room. Despite the resolution of their argument, there is a chill she cannot shake off, a weight in her core that they couldn’t possibly understand. They aren’t Berthold Hawkeye’s children; they don’t bear grief that will not be eased by simply not mentioning him. They don’t know the fear that she has lived with since that night, how close she is to bursting now, how—how much _anger_ there truly is beneath that fear.

She rises suddenly from her seat. “Thank you, General de Havilland, but I’ll have to decline. I’ve got work for the madame that I have to get back to now. Please let me know if you need anything.”

Riza turns and leaves the kitchen, then rushes up the stairs as her knees tremble and buckle. She is filled with an overwhelming urge to run, not unlike the night the world burned all around her. But there isn’t anywhere else to hide in this faraway town that was once her refuge from the ghosts of what she had lost. This town is no more than a place where the flames have caught up with her, no more than another place to burn.

Surely she must have realized it long ago, with the nightmares that never stopped coming and the mornings that kept bringing her agony. The frequent aching has never gotten easier; her daily reminder of who she is and what she has gone through is no less painful to hear now than it was the first time. Perhaps she has been running without rest for far too long, and yet…

And yet, she realizes, she may have never left the flames at all.


	5. Keeper of the Flame

The town bells of Mebdo toll at eight in the evening, and the day comes to an end far earlier than in Central or even East City. Their sound echoes softly even through the villages higher up the mountain, blending in with the chirping of crickets and nocturnal birds. But in Madame Alcott’s house, the sound is drowned out by the laughter and conversation in the living room, where the madame has gone on to entertain her guests following her interview.

Riza hears them from the top of the stairs, the madame laughing heartily at a story animatedly told by General de Havilland as though they were old friends catching up after a long separation. Any tension that may have come from their interview that afternoon is gone, and perhaps it’s part of the reason behind the sudden arrangements that Riza has spent the past couple of hours preparing for the guests. She even missed dinner to attend to it, but it was a welcome excuse not to socialize with anyone.

She takes a deep breath then steels herself to descend to the living room. As the warmly lit room comes into view, Riza stops at the last step of the stairs.

“Pardon me,” she begins. “The guest rooms are ready, if you’d like to settle in.”

de Havilland finishes his cup of tea, sighing in satisfaction. “Thank you very much, Miss Hawkeye.” He then turns to the madame. “Miss Alcott, you are far too generous. Lieutenant Mustang and I would have been happy to find accommodation in the town proper.”

“Oh, nonsense!” says Madame Alcott, waving her hand dismissively. “We’re perfectly happy to have you here as our personal guests during your stay in Mebdo. Riza knows well how much I love to entertain. And after all, it would be much more convenient for us to meet my students here. We will be very comfortable, and we can talk for as long as we want.”

“Splendid. I look forward to these meetings. Miss Hawkeye, please lead the way.”

Roy rises from his place at the end of the couch, where Riza surmises he has been keeping mostly to himself, judging by the tension that is released from his limbs. She turns before they can properly exchange a glance, then heads up the stairs with the men and their luggage behind her.

On the second floor, Riza turns to a long corridor and leads de Havilland to the first room—the house’s former master bedroom, when the madame was much younger and her family lived together. The general smiles and bows his head in thanks.

“Good night to you, Miss Hawkeye.” To Roy, he says, “And to you as well, Lieutenant Mustang. It’s been a long day. We will discuss our plan for the next two weeks over breakfast.”

“Sir,” Roy affirms from behind Riza.

de Havilland closes the door behind him, and then Riza is left alone with Roy. She nods to acknowledge him. “This way.”

There is something peculiar about the act of leading him to his room at the end of the corridor. Riza finds herself incredibly conscious of the way Roy’s eyes feel on her back, of the unspoken fact that much has transpired between this moment and the first time she showed him his room at the Hawkeye house. A moment from a lifetime ago, between two different people she wouldn’t recognize if she were to see them now.

She opens the door for Roy and backs against it to let him through. As he passes her, he comes almost close enough for them to touch. He is suddenly more real to her than he has seemed throughout the day. Riza is struck by his presence, never having stood this closely to him before.

He turns and looks at her, as though weighing the silence that hangs between them.

“It’s good to see you,” Roy says at last, good-naturedly. “It’s been a long time.”

His face is half-illuminated by the light of the room and difficult to read even up close. Slowly, Riza responds, “Yes, it has.”

“I didn’t think this is how we would see each other again.”

“I didn’t _think_ I’d ever see you again.”

“Neither did I, most times. I...” Roy averts his gaze as he struggles to articulate himself. His words come out in stutters with a short, nervous breath. “I thought you were…”

His voice dies in his throat. Riza can only imagine what must have made him believe that the worst had happened to her, but in light of everything she has been through, the matter of her death seems so trivial.

“Is this any better than what you expected?” Riza asks, only belatedly realizing how unsympathetic the question sounds. Roy looks as though his face had been splashed with cold water, and so she tries to look apologetic, speaking more gently. “You’d better get some rest, Mister Mustang. It looks like you’ll be as busy tomorrow as you were today.”

She begins to close the door and is suddenly stopped when Roy quickly grips its edge.

“Wait,” he says. He breaks into a small, friendly. “We’ve known each other quite a while, haven’t we? Maybe it’ll be easier for the two of us to not be strangers to each other. Please, call me Roy.”

A pause.

“Good night, Lieutenant.”

She avoids meeting his eyes as she closes the door, doesn’t look back when she walks away, towards her room. And then, as if out of nowhere, her tiredness begins to set in. It’s been a long day, and she has yet to finish even one of the transcripts she had been working on for the madame. Riza feels that she might fall asleep as soon as she tries to continue working in her room.

She has just begun considering to work in the kitchen instead when she reaches the second floor landing and finds Madame Alcott coming up the stairs.

“Riza, my dear.” The madame squeezes Riza’s arms affectionately. “I’m afraid I’ve overworked you today. I can’t thank you enough for helping me take care of our guests.”

“It’s no trouble at all, madame,” says Riza.

Madame Alcott studies her face silently, and she realizes that her strained smile has betrayed her. Riza is no longer surprised by the way the madame always seems to guess exactly how she is feeling, even in complicated matters related to her father for which the madame could never fully grasp the reason.

The madame takes a deep breath. “I am deeply sorry for the way I spoke of your father today.”

This catches Riza off-guard.

“My opinion of him never has been favorable, but I should have known better than to express it so brashly at this time,” the madame continues. She cups Riza’s cheek with one hand, rubbing it with her thumb. “What matters more is how you feel. It’s all right to grieve.”

Perhaps Riza is getting sleepier, or she simply finds comfort in the madame’s sincere apology. She smiles more warmly this time and bows her head in respect. “It’s all right, Madame Alcott. I understand. I always knew how you felt about Father not letting me learn alchemy. But you’ve taken care of me since the night he died. I could never repay that.”

“Your presence here is quite enough. Retirement hasn’t been easy all by myself, so I’m glad to have you here for company. You are welcome in this house no matter what, hmm? Now get some sleep, my dear.”

Riza watches as Madame Alcott retreats to her room at the other side of the landing. “You too, madame.”

It is silent in the house for the first time since that afternoon. Riza believes for a moment that it will give her the respite she needs to both resume her work and, later, get a good night’s sleep. But she couldn’t be more mistaken. Whatever good her last interaction with the madame did for her dissipates as soon as she enters her room, leaving her to deal with the complicated shock of seeing Roy again, the sting of Madame Alcott’s unkind words for her father, her distaste for the false graciousness she has had to display through it all. It is two in the morning when, having barely started transcribing the second set of documents on her desk, Riza finally gives in to the lull of sleep, resigning herself to the same old nightmare that is sure to come to her once more.

Barely three hours later, it isn’t the flames or her father that wakes her.

She seems to feel every sensation all at once. Limbs aching from sleeping in the wrong position, heart palpitating like it does every morning, skin so drenched in sweat that her clothes cling uncomfortably to it. Her mind, clear and alert after her first dreamless sleep in a long time, as though she has been awake for hours.

In the absence of her usual nightmare, her subconscious had drifted off to other unwelcome thoughts. And although in four months she has gradually taken control of her mind by way of her mantra and her tasks that leave her with little time for anything else, these thoughts get the better of Riza now as she peels her damp shirt off her back. First she blames Roy Mustang for disrupting her peace in her new home, but deep down she knows that the truth has never left her. She had simply buried it beneath her grief; she has no choice but to face it again now, as she would have eventually.

Arms crossed around herself, her fingers brush gingerly over her shoulders, then down her sides. She takes one deep, ragged breath, stands in front of the room’s full-length mirror, and turns around.

The intricate red array on her back hasn’t changed. Every word of the inscribed passages is accurate to her memory, every stroke and swoop drawn right where they should be. It is still perfect and precise and the most fascinating thing Riza has ever seen. It overwhelms her with an old sense of reverence for Berthold’s work, the crippling doubt she overcame to have his work tattooed on her back, the searing pain of the moment that it happened. Her long-suppressed feelings, emerging from the hidden corners of her mind at last.

For three years, it was the most important thing in her possession, and her father’s death has made it even more invaluable. A precious secret turned into his final inheritance. But the flames that were absent from her sleep are here now, etched into her father’s work and turning it into a reminder of tragedy, and she knows _why_ she has needed to pretend that it never existed in the first place. Riza’s fingernails dig into her skin, clawing at whatever part of her back she can reach and leaving raw, pink trails.

It _must_ go. It cannot be part of her.

Riza doubles over on her knees. It takes everything she has not to scream. She scratches and scratches and she wants to stop, not for the sake of her stinging skin but for her father who trusted her sound judgment to keep his secrets safe.

“This alchemy must not end up in the hands of just anyone,” her father had said. “Do you understand?”

She did. She still does. But how could she live with flame on her skin when she can no longer even bear to have it live in her head?

Something like this should be the least of her worries right now. Outside the window, the sky has turned from velvety blue to a brighter shade, tinged with warm yellow along the horizon. The sunrise serves as a direct reminder of Riza’s unfinished work from the day before rather than the abstract measure of reality that she usually considers it to be. She shakes her head, willing herself to focus. There are errands to be run in town, chores to be completed, the profiles of the madame’s students waiting to be transcribed—where does she even begin?

Out of nowhere, a plan comes to her like a spark.

* * *

There is a flurry of activity in the Alcott house over the next two weeks. Just as Madame Alcott had promised, she welcomes alchemists from all over Mebdo to meet with Roy and de Havilland, who in turn find that many of their interviewees are friendly with the madame. A number of them were taught by the madame as children, while others are grown adults. Each one is glad for an excuse to see the madame.

The interviews begin in the morning, just after breakfast. Madame Alcott sits in on the interviews, curious about their guests’ beliefs in alchemy, proud to share her personal philosophy of alchemy as a congruous practice. Riza is present as well to take notes on Madame Alcott’s behalf, since the madame has expressed an interest in recording these different beliefs and in keeping up-to-date on her former students’ work since taking them under her wing.

For the rest of the day, Riza retreats to the kitchen, still observant even as the interviews in the living room end and turn into more casual exchanges filled with laughter and, in the case of the madame’s former students, reminiscing over their early experiences with alchemy. It isn’t difficult to keep up as Riza has met many of these former students before, during personal visits to the madame. Marcus Jacoby, Cassandra Evans, Daniel Lawrence—she recalls their names, the number of siblings they each have, their parents’ occupations and more.

Riza then sets her plan in motion. Being familiar with the way alchemists protect their research from prying eyes, she uses these details about the students’ lives to encode the information from her tattoo into a more innocuous format. Birth dates and ages replace values in scientific formulas; names, addresses, even favorite foods become code for the elements that make up fire and concepts related to its creation and sustainment.

There is a responsorial psalm in the tattoo, the _Libera me_ , which Riza can recite from memory. She rewrites this as the students’ passing statements during their interviews and her own commentary of their interactions with the madame.

Originally, it begins:

> _Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,_ _  
> __When the heavens and the earth shall be moved,_ _  
> __When thou shalt come to judge the world by fire…_

In Riza’s new notes, the passage becomes:

> _Daniel Lawrence visits the Madame again today, coming up_ _  
> __from his home in town to the higher areas, here in Upper Mebdo._ _  
> __He still regards her very warmly, and thinks the world of her._

It’s a painstaking effort, transcribing conversations during the day and then rewriting them late into the night as she looks over her shoulder, studying the details of the tattoo again and again in front of her mirror. But before she knows it, a week has passed and she has completed creating her new notes—twenty full pages of her notebook containing detailed information on flame alchemy.

However, Riza quickly finds herself feeling uneasy rather than fulfilled. Strange. She knows she has gotten every detail correct, explained every concept accurately, but the work leaves her restless for two nights afterwards; second-guessing herself tires her out more than creating the notes did.

At last, it dawns on her: she is filled with guilt. When Berthold tattooed his research onto her back, she knew that he didn’t intend it to simply be convenient or easily carried by Riza wherever she went. He had meant for it to be guarded with all she has, and for her to give it away only with full trust, confidence, and intent. But creating the notes had been a selfish plan, a fact that she only sees now after getting past the need to dissociate herself from something that is, after all, a permanent part of her body.

Selfish, not to mention dangerous.

And so in the dead hours of the night, Riza sneaks out of her room with the notes, a hastily formed plan leading her to the kitchen. As she approaches, she is suddenly filled with dread, a cold sweat coming out through her back. She falters only for a second on the stairs, taking a deep breath before finally entering the kitchen.

Riza hasn’t cooked a single meal since moving in with Madame Alcott, hasn’t started a fire in the hearth even once. The madame has been completely understanding of her unwillingness to do any chore that directly deals with fire, and so Riza has not needed to come anywhere near fire until now. She is already trembling as she takes a box of matches from the cupboard and carefully lifts the firewood from the storage compartment into the main chamber of the cast iron stove.

She holds her breath and strikes the match.

Riza turns away, staggering against the kitchen table. She grips the edge of the table tightly as the fire behind her crackles into steadiness. When the fire begins to grow silent, she takes another deep breath, forcing herself to face it again and keep it burning by adding more wood. And it’s only then that she remembers the need for kindling, that the fire could have started burning hotter and faster with it. Her notes. The sight, sound, and feel of fire paralyzed her so quickly that she has nearly forgotten them.

There is a sudden sound of movement outside the kitchen as she retrieves the notes from the table. Then, Roy Mustang appears before her, and the pages slip through her hands and scatter all over the floor.

* * *

Roy awoke long before he heard the sound of movement in the kitchen in the middle of the night. He isn’t even truly sure he slept at all, but since hearing the disturbance, he hasn’t been able to even try falling asleep again. Not that it matters, Roy thinks. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in more than three months.

He has since made a habit of studying and practicing his alchemy whenever he needed to tire himself for bed. It’s far more tedious than the routine he briefly lived out in East City before meeting de Havilland, but he has made enough progress to make the effort worthwhile. Tonight, however, Roy allows himself to be drawn to the puttering in the kitchen instead of his study materials; he would best be useful if a thief has broken into the house, after all.

He doesn’t know what he expected to find there. Certainly not Riza, her eyes tired but frantic at the same time, rigid as though she’d been caught in the middle of something unpleasant.

“Miss Hawkeye, are you all right?” Roy asks, approaching tentatively.

A stack of papers had fallen to the floor with his arrival. Roy nearly steps on one of several pages’ worth of handwritten material, which Riza quickly begins gathering. He crouches down and reaches for the papers which have fallen farther away from her.

“It’s nothing,” Riza mumbles. “I was making tea for myself. I couldn’t sleep.”

Roy pauses for a moment. He hasn’t stopped to wonder what the nights have been like for Riza since Berthold’s death. It’s no wonder that she would struggle with sleep, but how different might her nightmares be from his? What does she see, what haunts her? It couldn’t be the same dark, crumbling heap of bone and ash that comes back for him each night, but he can only imagine how much worse it must be for Riza.

His voice is surprisingly gentle when he hands the papers to her. “Me too.”

She briefly hesitates to take them back from him. “Thank you.”

Roy watches as Riza carefully taps the papers into alignment with hesitant fingers, then sets them down slowly onto the table. He doesn’t notice the silence stretching far too long, or Riza seeing the way he looks at her hands. Her grip on the papers tightens. “What are you looking at?”

“Oh. Uh…” His gaze flits over to the stove, and he clears his throat. “You haven’t put on the water.”

Riza blinks and shakes her head. “Right.”

She quickly moves around the kitchen, gathering what is needed for making tea from one cabinet, then another. As Riza busies herself with the tea, Roy sits by the table, his attention drawn to the notes she left near him. Curious, he takes the first page and reads it carefully.

“Are these about Madame Alcott’s students?”

She responds after a moment’s pause. “Yes. The madame likes to have notes on them. It’s why I’ve been present at their interviews. But I already know them from before, so it wasn’t difficult to write their profiles.”

“I can see that. This is very detailed.” There is another moment’s silence, as though one were waiting for the other to speak first. Roy hesitantly attempts to carry on the conversation. “I guess all this work for Madame Alcott has been keeping you preoccupied.”

The paper leaves his hand suddenly; Riza has grabbed it, replacing it with a cup and saucer in front of him before taking the rest of her notes as well. She sits across Roy, placing the notes protectively close to herself.

“I understand that you’re upset about Father’s death too, Lieutenant Mustang,” Riza says rather sternly. “But I still find it difficult to talk about him. I hope you understand.”

“No—no, that’s not what I meant,” Roy quickly replies. “I just... I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Riza frowns again. And although the admission had been sudden, he is overcome once again by the fear he first harbored about her upon finding that she has disappeared from the Hawkeye house. The memory is as palpable as a flame, the way that the assurance of her survival is as sobering as a cold splash of water.

“Thank you for your concern,” says Riza. “I don’t see why, though. You’re not obligated to look after me.”

Roy offers a kind but sad smile. “I know I’m not family, but that doesn’t mean I care any less. You welcomed me as Master Hawkeye’s student all those years ago. Your family looked after me while I was there. I’m grateful for that.” His smile fades. “When I came back from the military academy and found your father dead, and you, gone… I knew I had to do anything to find you. Alive. I would have taken care of you if I knew then. If you came to me.”

He isn’t sure that Riza believes him. But expressing his anxieties about her for the first time gives him a sense of relief; it’s more than he could ask for after all that has happened.

Riza speaks again after a long while. “I’ve been doing all right. There’s no need for you to dwell on me, or Father.”

“But I do. This isn’t just about Master Hawkeye.” Roy hesitates briefly. “You might not be safe… not here.”

“... what do you mean?”

Roy swallows, and he takes a deep sigh. He isn’t prepared to answer the question, because he didn’t plan to talk about _it_ this way—he hasn’t made a plan for it at all. His suspicions came about nearly two weeks ago, and since then, he has wondered how best to share them with Riza without causing unnecessary alarm. All he knows is that they concern her once again, whether or not she realizes the delicate situation she is in. Then Roy decides that it doesn’t matter how he tells her in the end.

“I’m sorry for asking you this again, but I need to know if you remember anything from the night Master Hawkeye died.” She begins to protest, and Roy urges gently, “Anything at all.”

At the very least, she seems to give the question some thought. She shakes her head. “I’ve tried to remember, Lieutenant Mustang. I really have. For the past few months, I’d hoped something would come back to me. But all there is… all I see is fire. Sometimes I hear Father’s voice, calling for help… but I’m never able to save him.” Riza exhales in resignation. “And I remember running away. How terrified I was. How I couldn’t turn back because there was nothing I could do.”

“Yes, there is.”

There is simply no easier way to say it. Roy continues in a whisper, “I suspect that Madame Alcott had something to do with Master Hawkeye’s murder.”

Riza bolts up from her seat. Angry, confused, alarmed. _“What are you talking about?”_

“Please listen to me,” Roy says, rising from his seat as well. He looks around and over his shoulder, then leans forward with his hands on the table. “You already know what General de Havilland and I have come here for. We’re concerned about the safety of alchemists all over the country; what we don’t tell just anyone is that it’s because of what happened to Master Hawkeye. We believe he was killed because he did important and dangerous work by pursuing his research on flame alchemy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“All the evidence points that way. The damage left behind by the fire that killed Master Hawkeye was minimal and confined to only one part of his study. Fire would have spread quickly in a place like that, unless it was controlled and deliberate. And I tried to recover his research from the remains, I looked through his personal journals and decoded them—there was nothing left behind about flame alchemy. His research is missing.”

“I don’t see how Madame Alcott has anything to do with this.”

“I didn’t want to consider it myself. I know how well-loved Madame Alcott is here, and I know you’ve been doing well with her. But out of all the alchemists we’ve talked to these past few months, she is the only one with a motive, and no alibi.”

“What—”

Roy goes around the table and comes face to face with Riza, bringing his voice lower. “Madame Alcott bears an incredibly deep grudge against Master Hawkeye over his practice of alchemy and over you. She wanted flame alchemy to be accessible to all, which wouldn’t have been possible while he was alive. And above all, she was in Cameron the night he—”

“That’s enough, Roy!”

He steps back, startled by her sudden use of his first name.

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Riza says harshly. “The madame has been there for me since the night Father died. No matter what she thought of him, she took me in, she looked after me. I don’t remember much of that night, but I’m sure of this. The madame is nothing like the person you think she is.”

It is the first time he has seen fire in her, and the least that she seems like the Riza he remembers. Roy backs away, but it must be grief, he thinks, something that he knows almost as well as she does. His own grief is why he is here in the first place, hoping that she might have the answers to Berthold’s death. He approaches cautiously, delicately.

“Miss Hawkeye,” he begins. “Riza. Please don’t misunderstand. There’s been an investigation back in Cameron, and I’ve thought about what I’ve learned about her, the way she speaks of alchemy like your father did—”

“And that’s all this is to you. This is all about my father.” Riza exhales scornfully. “No. This is about flame alchemy, and it doesn’t matter to you how you obtain it, even if it hurts other people. Even if you hurt me and Madame Alcott.” She shakes her head in disgust. “It’s not what Father would have wanted.”

Riza turns and walks away with her notes, their tea forgotten, Roy helpless as he watches her leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the 1943 film Keeper of the Flame, which stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and which I happily discovered while writing this chapter. No inspiration whatsoever was drawn from it during the planning of SWF. I hear it's good.
> 
> To everyone who's come this far, thank you so much and I'm happy you're enjoying(?)! A new chapter will be coming out next week, as scheduled, and as early as now I'd like to let you know that I will be adding new warning tags for a major event happening in the story soon.
> 
> See you all again soon!


	6. The Spark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been here for a while, thank you so much for your patience. As I addressed in the previous chapter, please mind the new tags I've added for Tragedy and Disaster, which will be applicable to a number of things moving forward.
> 
> If you're here for the first time, I hope you enjoy the ride!

Roy is reminded, more than anything, of his early days with Berthold Hawkeye while he stays at the Alcott house. He is an apprentice to de Havilland much like he was to Berthold, as their interviews with the alchemists of Mebdo seem like lessons just as much as they are work. He learns about the town, its way of life, and about the unique ways its residents study and use alchemy. On his own time, he preoccupies himself with studying, bent on learning some other advanced form of alchemy from the books he had brought with him.

He also finds that he and Riza have gone back to regarding each other as they did when they had just met and were barely acquainted. Since that night in the kitchen, they’ve become overly polite with each other in the few times that they’ve had to interact, and they have seen each other so much less that he believes Riza is deliberately avoiding him. Roy finds few chances to apologize; he is overwhelmed by his guilt each time.

It had been much easier to get to know each other out of nothing, even though she was rightfully apprehensive of him, a newcomer at her home. They were so young then, yet already facing incredible changes in their lives. Roy knew no one when he came to Cameron; Riza had just lost her mother. Friendliness came naturally after some time of living together with no one else but her perpetually preoccupied father. He could not call it a friendship, but in time, having each other around became something that Roy considered just as precious.

It was a companionship. It is what Roy misses now more than anything.

This new tension between himself and Riza has made it difficult for Roy to concentrate as he practices his alchemy. One afternoon has been particularly frustrating, with Roy having stood for hours outside the Alcott house attempting flame alchemy on two piles of chopped wood and one of charcoal briquettes. The briquettes quickly burned out after taking the better part of two hours to ignite, but neither the damp nor the dry wood has given off so much as a spark. Roy clicks his tongue in frustration.

He looks up and finds that he isn’t alone. Some meters away, at the cliff behind the house, de Havilland and Alcott chat delightedly as they have several times since Roy first arrived with the general in Mebdo. He can’t imagine a greater disappointment than this, that the one person who seems to be the missing piece of Berthold’s murder is well within the general’s good graces, while he is left with his own suspicions, without an ally or a friend.

de Havilland doesn’t see what he does. Roy realizes this as the general looks over and acknowledges him with a nod. He waits—sure enough, de Havilland and Alcott quickly end their conversation after that. Roy watches the madame retreat into the house, then turn to him with a knowing, falsely warm smile.

“I see you have had little luck here, Lieutenant.”

The general says this by way of greeting as he approaches. Roy releases a tense breath with a bit of a self-effacing sneer. “That, I have.” With his foot, he erases the transmutation circle that he had drawn in the soft soil. “I managed to trigger a reaction in the briquettes, but only because of their more combustible components. The wood has been harder to get burning on its own. I’d hardly consider this flame alchemy.”

“Well, as long as you aren’t burning down Miss Alcott’s house, I would consider any progress you make today to be positive.”

Roy laughs. “General de Havilland, I don’t think I’d—”

There isn’t a hint of irony or humor in de Havilland’s face. Roy frowns.

“Let us be perfectly plain about it, Lieutenant,” de Havilland says. “You have made no secret of your disdain for our gracious host. I can only assume it is due to her critical opinion of Berthold Hawkeye. And while I understand that you are navigating through complicated emotions at this time, prejudice will not lead you to a resolution. I’m afraid it is clouding your mind.”

“Sir,” Roy asserts, “I know it may seem that way, but this has nothing to do with how I personally feel about Madame Alcott. I believe there’s enough reason to see her as a suspect in Master Hawkeye’s murder.”

de Havilland appears unsurprised, and yet he nods slowly as if he were deep in thought. “That is a serious accusation. I do see why you would come to believe this, but I would also advise you to be prudent with your assumptions. We are as yet in the preliminary stages of identifying persons of interest, with little to go by outside of a few peculiar coincidences.”

“But if we could conduct further questioning—”

“I would prefer to think of Miss Alcott as a valuable, _trustworthy_ asset at this time. Lieutenant Mustang, allow me to remind you that our priority in this assignment is the welfare and security of all alchemists in this country. We cannot allow other objectives to take precedence over this, lest we falter in our devotion to the people.”

With the firm tone of finality in de Havilland’s voice, Roy doesn’t dare press on further. His earlier certainty and determination have withered, not because he now believes his claims to be groundless, but because of the insinuation that he has been self-centered. Worse still, he cannot disagree, not when Riza had accused him of the same thing for the same reasons. Shame isn’t quite enough of a name for how he feels.

de Havilland grips Roy’s shoulder in sympathy, his voice kinder when he speaks this time. “No doubt your journey has been difficult. But you will find its end to be rewarding if you place your faith in that which matters. I am sure you can start again on the right footing.”

Roy is alone once again after de Havilland leaves. It takes him a moment to realize what has changed in front of him, having missed the flash of light in the moment it happened. The charcoal briquettes have been restored to their original unburnt state, ready to be ignited again. Even without having seen de Havilland perform alchemy before, Roy recognizes it at once as his work, and beyond Roy’s awe for the things that become possible through alchemy, the general’s message is clear:

_There is not just one way to move forward._

The sky is now a warm color, and Roy turns to watch the sunset. Now more than he ever has since coming to Mebdo, he thinks of home many miles away, how he must be facing the door of his childhood home in Central if he has gotten the angle just right. Although he visited home between his graduation from the military academy and his return to the Hawkeye house, his time away for the past few months has felt longer than his stay at the academy ever did.

Roy misses them all terribly. His aunt Madame Christmas, who tirelessly raised him following his parents’ untimely deaths and never treated him as any less than her own. The girls of Madame Christmas’ bar, whom he grew up with and loved like sisters, whose dreams of better lives inspired him to dream for them as well. He wants nothing more than to be home with them again. But they have put their faith in him to serve a greater purpose, and he could never turn his back on this.

If Berthold were still alive, would he have faith in Roy?

Does Riza?

* * *

The madame’s stares linger upon Roy throughout the evening. Something has changed in the way she looks at him. The silent contempt she has held for him since learning of his connection to Berthold is now something more thoughtful, almost kind. It leaves him uncomfortable, perhaps more than any other time she has looked at him throughout his stay in Mebdo, but Roy doesn’t ask about it.

After dinner, as Roy returns to his room, Alcott silently follows him up the stairs. He stops halfway and turns to her, unsure of what to make of the act. Neither has tried to speak to the other privately before, or for any purpose other than the interviews being conducted in the house. Neither speaks immediately now. Roy waits, wondering if she hopes to hear an apology or an explanation from him.

And then Alcott approaches him, surprising him when she touches the side of his face. Roy doesn’t flinch. He had thought she would have a strong hand, but her touch is gentle and motherly. He feels warmth and forgiveness and even pity, and for a moment it seems impossible that Alcott is capable of any anger or hatred. For a moment, Roy sees the woman whom her friends and former students admire.

It feels like being welcomed home. He wonders if this is the exact way Riza felt when she began to live with the madame following her father’s death.

“Such a great young man you could be,” Alcott whispers, “if you were not to be like him.”

A small, quiet part of him readily believes her.

* * *

The mornings of the past few days have been kinder to Riza. She doesn’t know how or when it began, but she finds comfort in the change. There is less fire in her dreams now, and quieter cries, and her palpitations and many body aches are becoming less painful and jarring. Waking up is easier than it has been for a long time.

Because of this, Riza has a newfound appreciation for her already enjoyable routine trips to the town proper. The long walk down from the village takes her mind off things, reminds her of what she likes best about living in a town like Mebdo. She likes the green views that stretch on for as far as the eye can see. She likes the locals, who are warm and friendly to her, perhaps more than anyone in Cameron ever was. Although she has lived in Mebdo for only a few months, Riza is treated as if she had grown up there and known her neighbors all her life. There is always a cup of coffee being offered to her “before you go on your way!” or some freshly picked fruit “for you and dear Beatrice!”

But Riza’s troubles stay with her beneath these little joys. One morning, she leaves for town earlier than usual, just as the sun peeks over the horizon, but before the stars of the previous night have completely disappeared from the sky. The light breeze is pleasantly cool, the birdsong gentle. None of these are enough to distract Riza from pressing matters.

The first has to do with the encoded notes on flame alchemy that she made a few days prior, which sit precariously beneath the few belongings in her luggage, which in turn she keeps under her bed. She hasn’t had a second chance to burn them since failing to do so the first time, nor has she been able to even think of starting another fire. Avoiding suspicion is yet another concern. Riza wishes she had thought of these things before allowing anxiety to drive her into making the notes—she hadn’t even made a plan for what to do with the flame alchemy array on her back, were she to keep the notes.

The second, more complicated matter takes shape behind her a little farther down the slope from Madame Alcott’s house.

“Miss Hawkeye!”

Riza continues walking without looking back. Roy, too, continues to follow her. “Are you headed to town?” he asks.

“I am.”

“I was hoping I could go with you. I’ve been meaning to make a phone call to Central.”

Riza takes a moment to respond. “Sure.”

She could never admit how much she has thought of Roy since the night of their argument. Once her initial feelings of shock and distress had dissipated, Riza realized how comforting it has been just to have a familiar, friendly presence in her new home. The years she had spent with a younger Roy seem so much more meaningful now that she is looking back not only at that time, but also at the difficult, solitary years that followed his departure for the military academy. During those years, she dealt with her father’s failing health and the burden of his secrets alone, and she recalls what she had hoped for then: that Roy would come back.

And then in the present, he walks around her and faces her, and Riza stops in her tracks. They exchange stares for a silent moment, which ends when Roy takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry.”

Riza’s face remains impassive. He continues slowly, almost hesitantly, “I’m sorry for the way I spoke about Madame Alcott the other night. I was inconsiderate and desperate for something to prove, and… I hurt you because of it. I could have hurt Madame Alcott. I could do better by my job, and by you. I hope you can forgive me.”

In the morning light, Riza is able to get a good look at Roy for the first time since meeting him again. He seemed so different then, with his new military uniform and perfect, confident posture—handsome, impressive, but cold and unfamiliar. The Roy who stands before her now is preferable, as sincere as any friend she could want, perhaps still able to understand her better than anyone else can.

She nods once.

“I forgive you, Roy.”

The entire air about him changes. Roy’s shoulders relax, his face brightens, and he seems like a different person all over again, his past and present selves bridged in just the perfect way. Riza feels a weight being lifted from her chest, and she cannot help but smile a little. She resumes walking, Roy matching her pace with light steps and his hands tucked casually into his pockets.

“So, Riza,” he begins after a while, her name still foreign in his voice, “how have you been?”

“What do you want to know about?”

“Anything. What you do here, who your friends are. Do you still take care of injured birds?”

Riza laughs at the sudden remembrance of this particular memory, not having expected it to come up now of all things. She looks back on it fondly; Roy had been living with them for barely a year when he noticed her penchant for tending to birds that had injured themselves around their house. He became a curious observer, helping Riza whenever he could by buying supplies in town or checking on her when the birds would keep her up late into the night. These instances were few and far between, but Roy and Riza formed a tentative bond over them. It makes sense that he would remember her best for those times. Riza sighs.

“Not anymore,” she says wistfully. “I actually haven’t seen a lot of them. I like to think they’re not as prone to injury around here. But I haven’t had much time to do things outside of my work for the madame. It keeps me busy.”

“What’s it like being Madame Alcott’s assistant?”

“There’s a lot of paperwork. She keeps a lot of material from her teaching days. Research, files on her old students, writings about the places she’s been to. I don’t help much with house chores, she prefers to do them herself. But she doesn’t have the energy to go into town, so I take care of all the errands there. In some ways, it's like..."

She trails off just short of mentioning Berthold.

“I see,” says Roy. “Do you go into town often?”

“Only as often as I need to. It’s mostly to buy food for the madame and myself. What did you say you needed to go to town for?”

Roy’s expression turns somber. “I haven’t exactly called home in a while, you see. To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen my family since… well, since I returned to Cameron. That was almost four months ago.”

Riza quickly realizes what this means, what Roy has devoted himself to from then until now. There is something lonely about the way death takes time away from being in the warm company of the living, especially considering the fact that Roy had spent that time on people who were not his own family. Riza nods in sympathy.

“I’m sure they miss you too. How were they when you talked to them last?”

“It’s still business as usual at the bar. It’s getting popular among high ranking officers—not my favorite patrons, but they pay well. It works out for my sisters.”

“And Madame Christmas?”

“She’s hoping I can spend some time back home before I get drafted. As I’m sure to be.”

There is a sour note in Roy’s voice, not because of the thought of the war, but at the mention of Madame Christmas’ wish. Riza decides to try and cheer him up. “You picked the best day to be in town. It’s usually livelier on Fridays, almost like Cameron. I think you’ll like it.”

“Lucky I have you to show me around, then. What’s in town today? Are you meeting some friends?”

“... I don’t exactly have friends here.”

After a pause, Roy says, “You do now.”

They turn to each other. A glance in one moment, then laughter in the next.

Riza learns much more about Roy during their walk into town than she ever did in three years of living together. She learns that he likes dogs, as she sees when they run into elderly Mrs. Brown and her hound in the next village—Roy allows it to sniff and playfully paw at him, and he rubs behind its ears before they continue their walk. He tells her about an early love for reading and literature that he shared with his adoptive sisters, beginning with poetry, which later led him to basic philosophy, and from there, to alchemy.

Roy’s stories about his childhood take her to Central, and she imagines tasting its food, walking its busy streets, catching a whiff of its air. It’s enough to see a different life for herself, even if only for a few moments. A life away from the home where she grieved the loss of her family, and away from this town where she has been hiding from her fears. Riza thinks of her dreams, and how it has been a long time since she has allowed herself to consider pursuing them beyond Cameron. She thinks of her mother, who grew up in Central before moving to the East to marry her father, and how wonderful it would have been to see the city with her.

“I almost forgot,” Roy suddenly says at some point. He stops walking and reaches for something inside his coat. “I hope you don’t mind—I took this from your house so I could show this to people when I was looking for you. It’s time you got it back.”

Riza’s heart swells with emotion at the sight of his gift. The old photograph, where she smiles with her mother, is the last one the two of them took together, if not the last happy memory Riza remembers having with her. Hardly any other possession has meant as much to her in the years that followed her mother’s death. She takes it from Roy with trembling hands.

“Thank you.”

Roy turns away, and Riza is grateful for the chance to wipe at the corners of her eyes.

* * *

The town square has never been so lively, or perhaps it seems that way to Riza because of all the little details that she is explaining to someone else only for the first time. She notes things that she didn’t realize she has known for some time, like the taste of different cheeses made with different kinds of milk across town, the beautifully rustic homemade pottery, and the icy spring water that flows freely from public drinking fountains. Her newfound awe nearly rivals Roy’s. When he asks what she likes best about the town, Riza shrugs.

“I’ve thought of staying here for good.”

Roy stops in his tracks by a fountain in the middle of the road. “Really?”

“It’s a nice town,” Riza sighs. She sits on the edge of the fountain. “Life is quiet and simple. It’s not very different from what Cameron was like, but there’s nothing left for me back home. There’s not much that I need that I don’t already have with the madame.”

After a long silence, Roy says, “So, you’re doing all right here?”

Riza smiles wryly. “I don’t know. But I’ve been worse.”

“That’s good. That you’re better somehow. I hope you truly find peace.” There is a melancholy note in Roy’s sincerity. He exhales, releasing some tension. “I should’ve done that by now. Everything seemed clear and well-planned until the day I got back from the academy. And now, I don’t really know what’s next for me.”

“I was under the impression that the work you came here to do has been going well.”

“We’ve been able to profile all these alchemists, yes, but I was supposed to do more than all of this. I hoped it would matter, that I was working with them, but it means so much less than everything I worked hard for. There has been nothing but dead ends for me from one town to the next. I just… I don’t know if any of it will make this country a better place at all. And I’ll never be happy if I can’t do that.”

“That’s why you became a soldier.” Riza pauses. “But I don’t see why this doesn’t matter, even to you.”

Roy shakes his head and sits next to her, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “It’s not enough. _I’m_ not enough. It’s as if I’m just watching through a window with my hands tied behind my back. All those years in Cameron, and not a single step forward…. This country has been in conflict for so long. As I am now, I can only do so much to make a difference.”

And she peers into his face as he stares ahead, as if lost among the crowd in the marketplace, but with eyes that are filled with fire. It’s a look that she has seen only a few times before, only whenever he tried to convince Berthold to teach him more than just the basics of alchemy, to trust him more than Berthold could afford to.

Riza whispers, as if to complete the thought, “So you’ve been looking for flame alchemy.”

He doesn’t respond. The corners of his mouth turn up slightly, not quite forming a smile, but enough to send uncomfortable pangs through Riza’s back, as if the secrets she holds there were about to burn through her flesh. Her father’s words ring in her head again:

_“This alchemy must not end up in the hands of just anyone.”_

“Miss Hawkeye! Fancy seeing you here!”

Both startled, Roy and Riza turn to the direction of the familiar voice. Daniel Lawrence, Madame Alcott’s student and one of the first alchemists they interviewed back at the house, comes up to them smiling amicably. There is a more relaxed air about him outdoors, from the wave of his hand to the sway of his chin-length hair in the breeze, and most especially in the way he eases up to Riza. She rises, and Roy follows suit.

“Good morning, Mister Lawrence,” says Riza.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it? I’m sure you find it a nice change of scenery from Madame Alcott’s.”

“It’s all right. Not much different from the other mornings I’ve been out.”

Daniel Lawrence chuckles. “It’s a shame we don’t see much of each other in this part of town. Won’t you join me for tea at the parlor around the block? Or perhaps we could have something small made for you at the Bartons’ woodshop. I think it would suit you well.”

He taps at the intricately carved wooden pendant that hangs from his neck, but Riza hardly notices the way it looks as she fights to hold back a laugh. She smiles, trying for polite regret, but sure that her amusement is showing through nonetheless.

“Thank you for the invitation, but I’d hate to leave Lieutenant Mustang in town all by himself. He might get lost.”

Daniel Lawrence turns to Roy, taking a moment to recognize him. He looks from Roy to Riza and back, and then his charm wavers, masked behind a comically nervous laugh. “Oh, pardon me, Lieutenant Mustang. I didn’t notice you there.” Clearing his throat, he quickly adds, “A lovely day to both of you—excuse me.”

They watch him as he hurriedly disappears into the crowd past them. Riza smirks. “He’s acting odd.”

“He’s attracted to you.”

She rolls her eyes at Roy.

Farther into the marketplace, Riza leads Roy to a one-story brick building that at first glance seems like an anomaly amid the town’s charmingly quaint atmosphere. It nearly appears abandoned, with its front wall of worn old wood and grimy glass, the words MEBDO POST OFFICE emblazoned on its entrance in peeling paint. Inside, the establishment is dimly lit and rather musty. But even as it begins to fill with its early Friday morning patrons awaiting their mail and parcels, Roy quickly spots the row of payphones installed at the back of the room.

“I’ll leave you here while you make your call,” Riza tells Roy. “Meet me at the fountain when you’re done.”

Roy nods. “I won’t be long.”

It is Friday morning, and the marketplace is at its busiest, so Riza enumerates the day’s errands as she navigates the stalls. She has just enough time to buy a week’s worth of food supplies for herself, the madame, and their guests at the Alcott house, then browse through the special goods that have been shipped in from all over Amestris. In the afternoon, she will be visiting the last few of the madame’s alchemist friends who haven’t yet been invited over for their interviews, and she considers bringing Roy along to meet them in advance.

Suddenly, there is a violent interruption to her thoughts as the air is pierced with yells, and Riza is on the ground, her hands scraped and soiled from breaking her fall—wasn’t she walking just now?—her chest pounding as though she had missed a step down a flight of stairs, her ankle stinging from stumbling and trying to remain on her feet. The townsfolk back away, sweeping up a confused Riza among them—

"Are you all right?”

_“What was that?”_

“Get back, get back!”

Riza sees a fissure splitting the ground open and the stone pavement crumbling below like sand, and then the next thing she knows is the crowd’s panicked rush out of the marketplace. Here and there she finds familiar shopkeepers belatedly noticing the commotion around them, and she reflexively reaches for them and pulls them out of their stalls and into the crowd, just as the stalls begin to splinter and collapse as well. Goods spill to the ground and pieces of wood hurtle in every direction—there is no way to tell what anyone is running on, or who is running into whom, until someone crashes into Riza, and even as she falls face-first she clearly hears the low, awful groan that follows.

She turns around, and Daniel Lawrence is dead.

His hair is wet with what she can only assume is blood, his stare blank and glassy, and _he can’t be dead, this isn’t happening._ A laceration has torn through the skin of his neck; as if in slow motion, Riza follows the line of the cut down to the black thread that holds his wooden pendant, the same one he tried to show her not even thirty minutes ago, now dangling lamely just an inch off the ground. Amidst the panic around them, she recognizes this time the engraving that she had been quick to dismiss as insignificant earlier. A transmutation circle.

It isn’t the shock and confusion from this discovery that keeps her frozen in place. It isn’t the flame that has suddenly burst overhead from nothing, weaving through the air and quickly consuming the marketplace. Though it had come quickly, like a spark, it lingers as if her entire body were burning along with everything else around her. It is a familiar fear, a once-apparent danger, a long-forgotten memory. A place she thought she had wholly escaped.

Once again, that night from months ago comes back to Riza in fragments, but the pitch black she knows so well by now gives way to clarity. It appears as a proper memory this time, so coherent that her body is filled with it and surrounded by it, the heat of a great and palpable flame, the smell of dust and old paper. Her father’s study threatens to burn into nothing, but against her better judgment she doesn’t run, desperate to keep what little is left of her old home, temporarily numb to the fear of what will come next.

Berthold appears in the flames, so horribly burned that he cannot be separated from it. Riza watches helplessly, her hands trembling. She hears a voice call her name, strangled and terrified, and she knows that it is her father’s.

She knows everything now.

She knows, at last.

* * *

His precious few minutes in conversation with his family were the happiest that Roy has had in a long time. He couldn’t contain his smile or the easy laughter that only his sisters are able to draw out from him as he listened to their stories of gleefully watching the military procession that had become a ritual in Central each morning, then their familiar teasing and bickering. In the latter half of the call came Madame Christmas’ firm but affectionate inquisition about his health and well-being and the assignment that he had been far too busy with to come and see them since the new year.

The call was cut short by the sudden commotion in the marketplace, which at first caught the patrons at the post office off guard, then sent them rushing out into the crowd as they screamed and called out for their families. Some stopped abruptly outside the post office, some collapsed, some backed away, and so Roy uttered a hasty goodbye before dropping the phone to see what was happening.

He remained level-headed and quickly responded to the situation, assisting the townsfolk out of the marketplace with a full grasp on his authority even as he realized the unsettling strangeness of it all. One could easily spot the ridged patterns on the pavement, the scope and suddenness of the destruction, and conclude that neither an earthquake nor any kind of structural flaw had triggered it. The question was not _what_ , but _who_.

Roy abandons the thought, and with most of the townsfolk out of harm’s way, he begins to look for Riza. He calls her name, but he hardly hears himself over the din, less so as a blaze seems to light up the sky, circling over the marketplace and catching on to everything within its reach. His heart begins to pound.

“Riza!”

In his mind, he sees her as if she had joined his old nightmares about Berthold, in her own gruesome scene of dust and bones.

“ ** _Riza!_** ”

He doesn’t know when or where he finds her, but he does so at last. Something about the sight of her frightens him, perhaps the blood on her clothes or her indecipherable stare, but as soon as he reaches for her and touches her he knows she is safe, at least for now. Roy grasps her arms, and he is alarmed by the tension in them, so great that she might just suddenly fall apart.

“... Riza?”

When she still doesn’t respond, he puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her up to her feet. He steers her forward, step by step—thankfully, she can at least manage that—and they trudge through the smoke, the debris, and whatever else is left of the formerly charming marketplace. Despite Riza’s condition, Roy leads the way as quickly as he can manage, perhaps driven by adrenaline, because in his growing exhaustion he doesn’t know how else he could still be on his feet.

They are nearly at the main road when the air begins to turn clear, as if there had never been any fire. An astounded Roy nearly forgets the danger that they have just narrowly escaped from, eagerly searching for the alchemist who has come to their rescue. The dust and smoke settle to reveal de Havilland, displaying formidable concentration as he draws the fire towards himself, where it disappears without a trace. If it took him a tremendous effort to perform this kind of alchemy, it does not show on his face.

“General de Havilland!” A soldier runs into view and salutes. “We have completed evacuation throughout the marketplace. If there is anything else my men can assist you with—”

“Yes,” says de Havilland. “This is no accident or natural occurrence. Find the perpetrator of this disaster, Lieutenant Colonel Bell, and bring them to me.”

“All criminal activity in Mebdo is under my jurisdiction—”

“And my jurisdiction over the activity of all alchemists throughout Amestris supersedes yours. I will not ask a third time: find the perpetrator. I want them alive.”

Lieutenant Colonel Bell does not object; he turns away and barks orders to his officers in the distance. Still hidden among the stalls, holding Riza upright, Roy’s awe for de Havilland and his alchemical skill begins to wane, replaced by unease towards the general’s abnormal behavior. He has seen de Havilland assert his authority whenever it was needed, but Roy does not recognize the obsessive fervor in his eyes, the anticipatory quiver in his otherwise full voice. This is a different side to de Havilland, one that stirs Roy’s suspicion.

Then, at last, he recognizes something in de Havilland as the general carefully drops his hand, the same one that had tamed the fire in the marketplace, and flexes his fingers as though disbelieving what he had just done, what he is capable of.

Roy knows it better than anyone: a hunger for flame alchemy to rival his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry to have kept this story dangling for a while! All the madness that happened in the world the past three months have been a little too much for me to feel like there should be room for heavy stories like this one. But I do have things to say, and even if I didn't the fact of creating and fandom alone is enough to justify going on. It's all most of us have, most days. (But I'd also be lying if I said that creating and fandom per se didn't have anything to do with the delay.)
> 
> So, we're halfway through the story! I appreciate every single one of you who's been here in some way. I won't be promising update schedules moving forward but I hope that the promise of seeing it through to the end is enough. 😅
> 
> Also, no, this isn't set in the same continuity as Little Bird.


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